Hudis Peter Marx's Concept of The Alternative To Capitalism PDF

Marx’s Concept of the Alternative to Capitalism
Historical
Materialism
Book Series
Editorial Board
Sébastien Budgen, Paris â•¯–â•¯Steve Edwards, London
Marcel van der Linden, Amsterdam â•¯–â•¯Peter Thomas, London
VOLUME 36
The titles published in this series are listed at brill.nl/hm

Marx’s Concept of the
Alternative to Capitalism
By
Peter Hudis
Leidenâ•‡ •â•‡boston
2012
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Hudis, Peter.
â•… Marx’s concept of the alternative to capitalism / by Peter Hudis.
â•…â•… p. cm. — (Historical materialism book series ; 36)
â•…Includes bibliographical references and index.
â•…ISBN 978-90-04-22197-0 (hardback : alk. paper) — ISBN 978-90-04-22986-0 (ebook)
1. Capitalism. 2. Marxian economics. 3. Marx, Karl, 1818–1883. I. Title.
â•… HB501.H7835 2012

â•… 335.4’12—dc23
2012008823
ISSN 1570-1522
ISBN 978 90 04 22197 0 (hardback)
ISBN 978 90 04 22986 0 (e-book)
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Contents
Acknowledgementsâ•‡ ......................................................................................... vii
Introductionâ•… Why Explore Marx’s Concept of the Transcendence of

Value-Production? Why Now?â•‡ ................................................................. 1
The object and purpose of this studyâ•‡ ....................................................... 1
Objectivist and subjectivist approaches to Marx’s philosophical
contributionâ•‡ . ............................................................................................ 9
1.â•‡ The Transcendence of Alienation in the Writings of the

Young Marxâ•‡ ................................................................................................. 37
Marx’s beginnings, 1837–41â•‡ ....................................................................... 37
Marx’s critique of politics and philosophy, 1842–3â•‡ ................................ 43
Marx’s critique of economics and philosophy, 1843–4â•‡ .......................... 56
Discerning the ideal within the real, 1845–8â•‡ . .......................................... 75
Evaluating the young Marx’s concept of a postcapitalist societyâ•‡ ........ 85
2.â•‡ The Conception of a Postcapitalist Society in the Drafts of Capitalâ•‡ ..... 93

The ‘first draft’ of Capital: The Poverty of Philosophy (1847)â•‡ .................... 93
The ‘second draft’ of Capital: the Grundrisse (1858)â•‡ ................................ 100
The ‘third draft’ of Capital, 1861–3â•‡ ............................................................ 133
3.â•‡ The Vision of the New Society in Marx’s Capitalâ•‡ . .................................. 147
Volume I of Capitalâ•‡ ...................................................................................... 147
Volumes II and III of Capitalâ•‡ ...................................................................... 169
4.â•‡ Marx’s Late Writings on Postcapitalist Societyâ•‡ ...................................... 183

The impact of the Paris Commune on Marxâ•‡ ........................................... 183
The Critique of the Gotha Programmeâ•‡ .......................................................... 187
vi • Contents
Conclusionâ•… Evaluating Marx’s Concept of a Postcapitalist Societyâ•‡ ...... 207
Appendixâ•… Translation of Marx’s Excerpt-Notes on the Chapter

‘Absolute Knowledge’ in Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spiritâ•‡ ..................... 216
Referencesâ•‡ ......................................................................................................... 223

Indexâ•‡ .................................................................................................................. 231
Acknowledgements
This work is not the product of mere solitary reflection, since it arose and
developed as a result of a series of discussions and debates with numerous
friends and colleagues over the course of the last decade, many of them
associated with the philosophy of ‘Marxist-Humanism’. I wish to especially
single out Richard Abernethy, Dave Black, Dan Buckley, Dale Heckerman,
Karel Ludenhoff, Eli Messinger, Marilyn Nissim-Sabat, James Obst, Sandra
Rein, Ali Reza, Sekou Samateh and Stephen Sarma-Weierman. I wish to espe-
cially thank Frieda Afary and Kevin Anderson for their insights, expressed
in numerous conversations and letters, and for their careful and studious
commentary on the manuscript.
I am no less indebted to the thoughts and suggestions provided by a num-
ber of scholars at Loyola University Chicago, who commented on earlier ver-
sions of this work. These include Andrew Cutrofellow, David Ingram, Lauren
Langman, David Schweickart, Dan Vaillancourt and Thomas Wren. While
any faults contained in this work are my responsibility alone, I could not have
come this far without their assistance.
Introduction
Why Explore Marx’s Concept of the
Transcendence of Value-Production? Why Now?
The object and purpose of this study

Two decades after the collapse of statist Commu-
nism in the USSR and Eastern Europe, which many
claimed had consigned Marx’s work to the dust-
bin of history, a new climate has emerged in which
his ideas are subject to renewed discussion and
re-examination. This change is due, in part, to the
phenomenon of capitalist globalisation, which has
sparked interest in Marx’s analysis of the inherently
expansionary and global nature of capital, which
he defined as ‘self-expanding value’. It is also due
to the emergence of a global-justice movement over
the past two decades, which has called attention to
the economic inequality, social instability and envi-
ronmental destruction that have accompanied the
global expansion of capitalism. Most of all, the new
climate of discussion on Marx’s work is due to the
worldwide financial and economic crisis that began
in 2008, the most serious to afflict the global econ-
omy in the past seventy years. The crisis has not only
revealed the deep fault-lines that prevent capitalism
from supplying the most basic of human needs for
hundreds of millions of people worldwide; it has
also made it clear that the system has little to offer
humanity except years and indeed decades of eco-
nomic austerity, reductions in public services, and
eroding living conditions. Capitalism has clearly
exhausted its historic initiative and raison d’être when
2 • Introduction
all it can offer the future of humanity are social and natural conditions that are
bound to become worse than those afflicting us today.
As a result of these and related developments, a number of new works on
Marx have appeared, many of which explore hitherto neglected aspects of
his thought – such as his writings on the world-market, economic crisis, race
and gender, non-Western societies, and the philosophical underpinning of
his analysis of the logic of capital. These studies have appeared while a new
edition of Marx’s complete works, the Marx-Engels Gesamtausgabe (known as
MEGA2), is being issued by an international team of scholars co-ordinated
from Berlin. MEGA2 will make Marx’s entire body of work available for schol-
arly analysis for the first time, in 114 volumes.1 It provides us with a new
vantage-point for exploring Marx’s work unencumbered by uninformed
claims about Marx’s work that have governed generations of earlier discus-
sions of Marx’s theoretical contribution.
Although the literature on Marx over the past one hundred years is immense,
most of it has focused on his analysis of the economic and political structure
of capitalism, the ‘materialist conception of history’, and his critique of value-
production. There has been very little discussion or analysis, however, of his
conception of what constitutes an alternative to capitalism. The lack of discus-
sion of this issue has persisted in the face of the growth of the global-justice
movement, which has sponsored a series of fora, gatherings and conferences
in Brazil, Venezuela, Kenya, Senegal and elsewhere since the 1990s, devoted
to the theme ‘Another World is Possible’. This diverse movement indicates
that despite the notion, which became widely voiced after 1989, that ‘there is
no alternative’2 to capitalism, increasing numbers of people around the world
are searching for such an alternative. However, there appears to be little or
no consensus within the global-justice movement as to what such an alterna-
tive might consist of. It is even hard to find consensus as to what theoretical
resources would need to be explored in thinking one out. As a result, the
discussion of alternatives to capitalism at events sponsored by the global-
justice movement tends to remain rather abstract and limited to statements
of intent.
1.â•‡ The first Marx-Engels Gesamtausgabe was issued in 12 volumes from 1927–35.
It is known as MEGA1. The new Gesamtausgabe, or MEGA2, began appearing in East
Germany in 1972 and has been issued since 1990 by a more international group of
scholars. It will eventually include everything Marx ever wrote, including his volu-
minous excerpt-notebooks, most of which were unknown until recently. It is the
only edition of Marx’s writings that meets the rigorous standards of modern textual
editing.
2.â•‡ Former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher popularised this phrase in the
early 1980s. For a discussion of its ideological impact, see Mészáros 1995.
Why Explore Marx’s Concept • 3
In some respects, today’s situation has not changed much since 1918, when
Otto Neurath of the Vienna Circle became the planning minister of the short-
lived Bavarian Socialist Republic. Shortly after the collapse of this early effort
to develop a postcapitalist social system he wrote:
At the beginning of the [1918] revolution people were as unprepared for the
task of a socialist economy in Germany as they had been for a war economy
when war broke out in 1914â•›.â•›.â•›.â•›Any preparation for consciously shaping the
economy was lacking. The technique of a socialist economy had been badly
neglected. Instead, only pure criticism of the capitalist economy was offered
and the Marxist pure theory of value and history was studied.3
It would be no exaggeration to say that nearly one hundred years later, the
situation described by Neurath continues to largely define contemporary
discussions of the issues raised by Marx’s work.
There are several reasons for the lack of theoretical reflection on and dis-
cussion of Marx’s view of the alternative to capitalism. Perhaps of foremost
importance is the claim that he simply never addressed the issue. It has long
been assumed that Marx’s criticism of some of the utopian socialists4 and his
strictures against inventing ‘blueprints about the future’, meant that he was
not interested in commenting about a postcapitalist society. Marx did not
indulge in speculations about the future, it is widely assumed, because he
believed that socialism would emerge quasi-automatically from the inherent
contradictions of capitalist society. Another reason for the paucity of discus-
sion of Marx’s view of the alternative to capitalism is that many defenders
and critics of Marx took it for granted that socialism is defined by the abolition
of the market and private property, and the formation of centralised, state-
planned economies. Many assumed that a socialist society consists of simply
‘taking over’ monopolised and semi-planned capitalism and running it ‘in
the interests of the masses’. To many, it therefore seemed superfluous to take
the trouble to sort out what Marx might have had to say about an alternative
to capitalism when the ‘socialism’ he strove for was presumably already in
existence. This attitude persisted long after it became clear that the societies
that called themselves ‘socialist’ or ‘communist’ were dismal failures. Given
the widespread discrediting of the régimes that claimed to rule in the name
3.â•‡ Neurath 1973, p. 18. Kurt Eisner, the leader of the Bavarian Socialist Republic,
asked Neurath to become planning minister at the end of 1918; he continued to serve
under the short-lived Bavarian Soviet Republic, which was installed in early 1919
following Eisner’s assassination.
4.â•‡ While Marx was very critical of some utopian socialists, he heaped considerable
praise upon others – especially Fourier and Owen.
4 • Introduction
of Marx, it seemed pointless to pour old wine into new bottles by inquiring
anew into what Marx had to say about alternatives to capitalism.
In the twenty-first century we face a radically changed situation. Now that
the state-powers that ruled in Marx’s name have largely passed from the
scene, at the same time that the entire corpus of his work is finally becoming
available for study, it becomes possible to take a closer look at his œuvre to
see if the assumptions that have traditionally governed the understanding of
Marx’s view of the alternative to capitalism are in fact accurate.
Four lines of inquiry guide this work. First, although Marx never wrote
a book devoted to the alternative to capitalism, and he was extremely wary
about indulging in speculation about the future (especially in his published
writings), numerous comments and suggestions are found throughout his
works about the transcendence of value-production and the contours of a
postcapitalist future. How significant are they? One of my purposes is to sub-
ject these comments to systematic and critical examination.
Second, even if it were true that Marx never wrote a word about a postcapi-
talist future, it does not follow that his work fails to speak implicitly or indi-
rectly to the matter in important ways. Is it plausible that Marx’s analysis of
capital was a purely empirical and scientific endeavour that was not in some
way informed by presuppositions concerning the kind of society he hoped
would one day come into being? One of the claims that I will aim to substan-
tiate is that the very content of Marx’s analysis of capital, value-production
and wage-labour rests upon an implicit understanding on his part of what
human existence would consist of in their absence. Allan Megill puts it thusly
in a recent analysis of Marx’s philosophical legacy: ‘In fact, it is perhaps better
not to call Marx’s method a method at all: it is much more an approach to the
material, a pre-established interpretative perspective. It is an approach that
“always already” contains within itself a certain conviction about capitalism,
namely, that capitalism is doomed to destroy itself’.5 Although Megill is cor-
rect that Marx’s work exhibits a ‘pre-established interpretative perspective’,
even if it is often only implicit in much of it, I believe he is incorrect in conter-
posing it to the presence of a distinctive Marxian method. Marx remained
deeply indebted to Hegel’s dialectical philosophy throughout his life, and it
directly informed his methodological approach to a host of issues. One of my
claims is that Marx’s dialectical method cannot be fully grasped or appreci-
ated apart from the specific vision of the future that grounded his critique of
capital and capitalism.6
5.â•‡ Megill 2002, p. 240.

6.â•‡ It has likewise been claimed that Hegel’s dialectical method cannot be fully
grasped or appreciated apart from his concept of ‘the Absolute’. For more on this,
Third, although most of Marx’s work consists of an analysis and criticism

of capital, the critique is hardly a purely negative one that fails to posit implicit
(and sometimes explicit) notions of a positive alternative to it. Marx never
denied his indebtedness to Hegel’s dialectic of negativity, and negativity in
Hegel does not lead to a nullity; instead, the positive emerges from the nega-
tion of the negation, which Hegel termed ‘absolute negativity’. Thus, Marx’s
undeniable debt to Hegel’s dialectic7 offers any serious student of Marx a fur-
ther reason to attempt to discern and analyse the indications of the future
that flow from his critique of the capital and other social forms that define
present-day society.
Fourth, relatively few scholarly readers of Marx today would contend that
his philosophical perspective had much to do with the totalitarian, single-
party states that ruled in his name. His emphatic support for democracy, free
association, and critique of statist domination, found from his earliest to his
last writings, offers strong support for this claim. What is far less clear, how-
ever, is what Marx envisaged as the specific form of society that could live up
to his liberatory ideals. Does he ever address this directly?
Despite the voluminous literature on Marx, there have been surprisingly
few attempts to examine his body of thought as a whole in terms of what it
suggests about a future, postcapitalist society. It does not seem possible to
fully evaluate the contributions or limitations of Marx’s legacy in the absence
of such an investigation. I will seek to fill this gap by exploring Marx’s con-
cept of the transcendence of value-production through an examination of his
body of work, as found in his major published writings as well as unpub-
lished ones that are now being compiled as part of the MEGA2 project.
This does not pretend to be a comprehensive study of Marx. Nor does it
attempt to put forwards a specific model of a postcapitalist society. Although
I consider efforts to produce the latter to be of great importance, I have a
more modest aim: to survey Marx’s work with one aim: to see what implicit or
explicit indications it contains about a future, non-alienating society.
Why, one might ask, begin here at all? The reason is that Marx is not sim-
ply one of a number of important thinkers but the founder of a distinctive
see Rose 1981, written from outside the Marxian tradition, and Dunayevskaya 2003,
written from within it.
7.â•‡ This debt permeated his entire work, including his ‘mature’ critique of political
economy. As Marx stated in 1875 a passage in Volume II of Capital that Engels left out
of the published version, ‘In my zealous devotion to the schema of Hegelian logic, I
even discovered the Hegelian forms of the syllogism in the process of circulation. My
relationship with Hegel is very simple. I am a disciple of Hegel, and the presumptu-
ous chattering of the epigones who think they have buried this great thinker appear
frankly ridiculous to me’. See Marx 2008, p. 32.
6 • Introduction
approach to the understanding of capitalism that retains its historical rele-

vance so long as capitalism remains in existence. Marx’s body of work is one
of those rare historical achievements that represent the crossing of a concep-
tual threshold; it marks a new philosophical moment that radically transforms
all subsequent approaches to the object of investigation. This is as true of those
who criticise Marx as much as those who claim to follow him. Marx’s work
(to borrow Michel Foucault’s phrase) is transdiscursive, in that it produces ‘the
possibilities and the rules for the formation of other texts’.8 His work delin-
eates the parameter of possibilities for the study of capital – as well as of the
alternative to it. In Marx, we encounter a thinker who possesses a deep and
profound emancipatory conception that radically separates him from his pre-
decessors. Although no Marxist himself, Michael Polanyi captured the sense
of the ‘irrevocable’ threshold that is crossed by an original thinker in a way
that addresses why any effort to think out an alternative to capitalism today
must come to grips with Marx’s philosophical contribution:
We call their work creative because it changes the world as we see it, by
deepening our understanding of it. The change is irrevocable. A problem
that I have once solved can no longer puzzle me; I cannot guess what I
already know. Having made a discovery, I shall never see the world again
as before. My eyes have become different; I have made myself into a person
seeing and thinking differently. I have crossed a gap, the heuristic gap
which lies between problem and discoveryâ•›.â•›.â•›.â•›We have to cross the logical
gap between a problem and its solution by relying on the unspecifiable
impulse of our heuristic passion, and must undergo as we do so a change
of our intellectual personality.9
This work focuses on Marx’s concept of the transcendence of value-produc-

tion because he held that capitalism is defined by the production of value
and surplus-value. Value is not the same as material wealth; it is wealth
computed in monetary terms. Marx acknowledges that value ‘exists initially
in the head, in the imagination, just as in general ratios can only be thought
if they are to be fixed, as distinct from the subjects which are in that ratio to
each other’.10 However, this does not mean that Marx considered value to
be a purely mental category, let alone a dialectical illusion. Value, he held,
expresses a real social relationship, since ‘As value, the commodity is at the
â•‡ 8.â•‡ Foucault 2003, p. 387.

â•‡ 9.â•‡ Polanyi 1962, p. 143.
10.â•‡ Marx 1986a, p. 81. The editors of the English-language Marx and Engels Collected
Works have chosen to entitle what has been known as the Grundrisse as Outlines of
the Critique of Political Economy (Rough Draft of 1857–58). For the sake of convenience,
I will refer to it by its better-known name, the Grundrisse.
same time an equivalent for all other commodities in a particular ratio’.11

Value is the name given for a real, material relationship, insofar as ‘value is
a commodity’s quantitatively determined exchangeability’.12
The peculiar feature of capitalism, Marx held, is that all social relations
become governed by the drive to augment value, irrespective of humanity’s
actual needs and capacities. He therefore treats value-production not as a
transhistorical feature of human existence but rather as a specific characteristic
of capitalist society. Marx was of course fully aware that commodity-exchange
predates the existence of capitalism. He does not, however, simply equate
value-production with the exchange of equivalents on the market. In precapi-
talist societies, he argues, goods and services were primarily exchanged on
the basis of their material utility, not on the basis of their (abstract) exchange-
value. Only with capitalism – that is, only when commodity-exchange becomes
the primary and indeed universal medium of social interaction through the
commodification of labour-power – does value becomes the defining principle
of social reproduction. Marx did not hold that labour is the source of value in
all forms of society; labour (along with nature) in precapitalist societies is a
source of material wealth, not of value. As Marx states in the Grundrisse, ‘The
economic concept of value does not occur among the ancientsâ•›.â•›.â•›.â•›The concept
of value wholly belongs to the latest political economy, because that concept
is the most abstract expression of capital itself and of the production based
upon it’.13
Marx also denied that value-production would characterise a postcapitalist
society. In response to one of the few critiques of his theoretical corpus that
appeared in his lifetime, he wrote: ‘Value. According to Mr. Wagner, Marx’s
11.â•‡ Marx 1986a, pp. 78–9.

12.â•‡ Marx 1986a, p. 78. Since value only exists in objectified form, the subject of
Capital, Marx takes pains to note, is not value itself but rather the commodity. Marx
does not treat the commodity, however, merely as a material thing or as a form of
material wealth. He treats the commodity as the ‘simplest social form’ in which value
manifests itself. In sum, the commodity-form is inseparable from value-production.
For more on this, see Marx 1989h, pp. 544–5.
13.â•‡ Marx 1987a, pp. 159–60. In his sometimes valuable recent study of dialectics, Paul
Paolucci is surprisingly imprecise on this point: ‘Although labor relations might be
different in various modes of production, it nevertheless remains true that labor is the
source of social value under tribal, slave, feudal, and capitalist modes of production,
though it may not have crystallized in the former to the point of there being able to
be discovered and conceptualized in the same way capitalism makes possible’. See
Paolucci 2007, p. 87–8. The passage conflates value with material wealth, presenting the
former as a transhistorical feature of human existence. He also contends that capitalism
reveals what prior modes of production conceal – the socially determinative role of
value. However, for Marx, capitalism is a mystifying system, especially in comparison
with precapitalist ones, precisely because it is defined by value-production.
8 • Introduction
theory of value is the “cornerstone of his socialist system”. As I have never estab-
lished a “socialist system”, this is a fantasy of Wagner, Schäffle e tutti quanti.’14
He added, ‘In my investigation of value I have dealt with bourgeois relations,
not with the application of this theory of value to a ‘social state not even con-
structed by me but by Mr. Schäffle for me’.15 According to Marx, social rela-
tions were not governed by the drive to augment value prior to capitalism and
they would not governed by it after capitalism.
Popularisations of Marx often reduce his theory of value to the notion that
labour is the source of all value. However, Marx never claimed originality for
this idea; he adopted it from classical-political economists like Adam Smith.
Marx’s main object of concern is not with the source of value. His primary
concern is with the way social relations in modern society take on the form of
value. His main object of critique is the inverted character of social relations
in capitalism, wherein human relations take on the form of relations between
things. There is little doubt that Marx’s critique of capitalism centres upon a
critique of value-production. What is far less clear, however, is exactly what
is needed, in Marx’s view, to surmount value-production. My aim is to dis-
cover the elements, however implicit, that he thought are needed to overcome
value-production.
My approach is to investigate Marx’s theoretical corpus on its own terms.
In doing so I will avoid conflating it with that of his close colleague and fol-
lower, Friedrich Engels. There is no question that Engels was Marx’s clos-
est colleague and follower. However, although Marx and Engels’s names are
often hyphenated and many have even treated their writings as interchange-
able, Marx was, by Engels’s own admission, a far deeper and more rigor-
ous thinker. On many issues their views are far from identical. Marx often
expressed surprise that he and Engels were viewed as identical twins. As he
wrote to Engels in 1856, ‘What is so very strange is to see how he treats the
two of us as a singular: “Marx and Engels says etc.”’.16 Since this is not the
place to enter into a comparative examination of whether or not Engels’s com-
ments on a postcapitalist society coincided with those of Marx, I will bracket
out Engels’s contribution by focusing primarily on the philosophical works
composed by Marx himself.17
14.â•‡ Marx 1989h, p. 533.

15.â•‡ Marx 1989h, pp. 536–7.
16.â•‡ See Marx 1983a, p. 64.
17.â•‡ An exception this will be when there is direct textual evidence that Marx
approved of specific formulations of Engels on postcapitalist relations, such as Engels’s
discussion of workers’ cooperatives and labour-time in Anti-Dühring.
Objectivist and subjectivist approaches to Marx’s philosophical

contribution
Over the past two decades, two major strains of thought have sought to
come to grips with the contemporary relevance of Marx’s critique of capi-
talism. One strain contends that Marx’s most important contribution lies in
his understanding of capital as an autonomous force that takes on a life of
its own, totally subsuming the will and actions of the human subject. In this
perspective, Marx analyses capital as a peculiar object of knowledge invested
with characteristics that parallel Hegel’s delineation of the logic of the concept
in the Science of Logic. These thinkers hold that capital, like Hegel’s doctrine of
the concept, possesses the distinct ontological property of complete indiffer-
ence to anything that lies outside its logic of self-movement. They therefore
view capital not only as the subject of Marx’s theoretical work but also as the
Subject of modern society. I call these theorists objectivist Marxists, because
they contend that Marx’s critique of capital is best understood as an analysis
of objective forms that assume complete self-determination and automaticity.
The objectivist Marxists include several distinct groupings: (1) the Japanese
theorist Kozo Uno and his followers, which include Thomas Sekine, Robert
Albritton, and John Bell; (2) the German philosopher Hans-Georg Backhaus
and US social theorist Moishe Postone, both heavily indebted to the work of
the Frankfurt school; and (3) the proponents of ‘systematic dialectics’ in the
US and Western Europe, such as C.J. Arthur, Patrick Murray, Geert Reuten
and Tony Smith.18
At the other end of the philosophical spectrum, a second and radically dif-
ferent strain of thinkers contends that Marx’s most important contribution
lies in his understanding of the subjective human forces that struggle against
and strive to annul capital’s drive for hegemony.19 They emphasise not the
self-determining and automatic character of capital but the limits and barriers
that it repeatedly encounters. I call these theorists subjectivist Marxists because
they emphasise the subjective human forces that seek to subvert and contain
18.â•‡ Although Tony Smith is part of the ‘systematic-dialectics’ school that has
emerged in the last decade, as will be discussed below, he has a radically different
interpretation of the Hegel-Marx relation from the other theorists of this tendency.
19.â•‡ This divide between subjectivist and objectivist readings of Marx has earlier
antecedents – such as in the debates in the early twentieth century between Georg
Lukács and Rosa Luxemburg, who each tended to emphasise subjectivity and mass
self-activity, and Karl Kautsky, Georgii Plekhanov and other ‘orthodox’ Marxists who
emphasised the importance of objective material conditions. In some respects, this
debate was replayed in Jean-Paul Sartre’s exchange with Althusser and Lévi-Strauss
in the mid-twentieth century. Debates within Marxist theory, as is the case with phi-
losophy as a whole, often take the form of matters of philosophia perennis.
10 • Introduction
the logic of capital. Prominent among the subjectivist Marxists are ‘auton-
omist Marxists’ such as Mario Tronti, John Holloway, Antonio Negri, and
Michael Hardt.
While these schools of thought have made a number of important contribu-
tions to the understanding of Marx’s work over the past few decades, I will
critically examine them in terms of how they worked to unearth Marx’s con-
cept of the transcendence of capitalist value-production.
The version of objectivist Marxism found in the work of Kozo Uno and
his followers holds that Marx analysed capitalism as a self-contained logical
system. The logic of capital, they contend, is not the same as historically-existing
capitalism since, as Thomas L. Sekine puts it, ‘the subsumption of real eco-
nomic life by the commodity-economy is never perfect or absolute’.20 There is
no direct homology between capitalism as it historically exists and the logic of
capital. The latter is the real object of Marx’s critique, since Marx aims to show
that generalised commodity-production is defined by a ‘dehumanising logic,
which, once it catches on, pervades the world until much of direct human
contact or community is obliterated’.21 Commodity-economic logics ‘seem to
have a certain automaticity’22 and an expansiveness that can only be properly
understood by discerning its abstract universal ‘laws’.
Sekine therefore argues that capital is best understood from the vantage-
point of the logic of capital rather than from the proletariat, non-commodified
social relations, or precapitalist modes of production. When capital is viewed,
‘from without, as, for instance, from the point of view of the revolutionary
proletariat, one ends up assuming the position of the blind man touching an
arbitrary part of the elephant. In the dialectic of capital the teller of the story
(the subject) is capital itself, and not “we” the human being’.23
What is achieved by focusing on the pure, abstract logic of capital? We
learn that capitalism becomes the more ‘perfect’ the more value-production
overcomes restrictions imposed by use-values. The more efficient capital is in
achieving this, the higher the rate of profit. The drive for profit is the absolute
idea of capital, it is the quest for an infinite surpassing of all limits: ‘As soon
as the rate of profit becomes the ‘subjective notion’ (in the Hegelian sense)
of capital, every individual firm strives for a maximum rate of profit, by the
mercantile practice of buying cheap and selling dear’.24
20.â•‡ Sekine 1997b, p. 212.

21.â•‡ Sekine 1990, p. 131.
22.â•‡ Albritton 1999, p. 13.
23.â•‡ Sekine 1990, pp. 129–30.
24.â•‡ Sekine 1997b, p. 7.
The Unoists argue that before we can begin to envisage a future free of
capitalism we must ‘first come to grips with the inner law of motion (or logic)
of capitalism’. If the idea of capital remains unclear, the understanding of
its transcendence would be ‘haphazard and arbitrary’. Hence, we should fol-
low Marx who ‘forgets about blueprints for the future and concentrates on
economics’.25
There is much to be said for the view that Marx does not analyse a
historically-existing capitalism but rather a chemically-pure capitalism that
does not exist and never will exist. He utilised this approach in order to dis-
cern capital’s ‘law of motion’, instead of getting bogged down in secondary
or non-essential features. However, questions can be raised about whether
Uno and his followers succeed in correctly identifying the essential features
of capital.
Sekine argues that ‘[c]apitalism is based on self-regulating markets and
anarchic production of commodities’.26 Robert Albritton likewise contends
that ‘[e]conomic reification implies a market-governed society: a society in
which the actions of human agents are directed and subsumed by market
forces beyond their control’.27 There is no doubt that self-regulating markets
and anarchic production were important factors in capitalism’s historical
development. But is this the same as claiming that the existence of an anarchic
market serves as a defining feature of the logic of capital? Moreover, is it the
market that generates ‘economic reification’ or is it produced, instead, by the
alienation of labour?
One of my aims is to investigate whether Marx considered the existence of
the market and private property to be defining factors of the logic of capital.
Albritton and other followers of Uno clearly insist that they are intrinsic to the
logic of capital: ‘Pure capitalism involves the subsumption of labour and pro-
duction-process to a system of interlocking markets that are self-regulating
in the sense that no extra-economic force (state, monopoly, trade-unions and
so on) can interfere with the markets’.28 Albritton writes, ‘Pure capitalism is
based on the absolute right of private property’.29
Since the Unoists contend that unregulated markets, anarchic competition
and private property serve as the inner core of the logic of capital, they con-
clude that contemporary society is no longer capitalist – since unregulated
markets and anarchic competition are a thing of the past. As Sekine puts it,
25.â•‡ Sekine 1990, pp. 128–9.

26.â•‡ Sekine 1990, p. 135.
27.â•‡ Albritton 1999, p. 17.
28.â•‡ Albritton 1999, p. 18.
29.â•‡ Albritton 1999, p. 20.
12 • Introduction
the contemporary world ‘cannot constitute a world-historic stage of develop-

ment of capitalism, since it fails to embody the logic of capital’.30 One is left
wondering what theoretical significance Marx’s work still has if this is in fact
the case.
Most importantly, the great stress that the Unoists place on unregulated
markets, anarchic competition, and private property leads them to deny that
alienated labour constitutes the defining feature of capitalism. Sekine writes,
‘Marx wrote a great book on capital (or commodities) not a book on labour
(or production)’.31 For the Unoists, forms of labour and the struggles against it
are not intrinsic to the logic of capital: ‘What we are trying to determine is the
material reproduction of social life entirely through a commodity-economic
logic without any human resistance or intervention of any form of extra-
economic force’.32
This view is not easily reconciled with the connection Marx makes between
the alienation of labour, value-production and capital. Marx held that capi-
tal is not simply an instrument of production; it is the expression of a spe-
cific kind of labour – abstract or undifferentiated labour. As he wrote in the
Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844, capital is the expression of ‘a
special sort of work which is indifferent to its content, of complete being-for-
self, of abstraction from all other being’.33 In capitalism ‘all the natural, spiri-
tual and social variety of labour’ is extinguished. This makes humanity ‘ever
more exclusively dependent on labour, and on a particular, very one-sided
machine-like labour at that’. As a result, the individual becomes ‘depressed
spiritually’; from ‘being a man [he] becomes an abstract activity’.34 In Volume I
of Capital, Marx further developed this with his concept of the ‘dual character
of labour’. All labour, he held, is simultaneously the concrete exertion of par-
ticular kinds of labour and undifferentiated, abstract labour. Abstract labour
is the substance of value and capital is self-expanding value. Marx considered
this concept of the dual character of labour so important that he referred to it
as his original contribution, also terming it ‘the pivot on which a clear com-
prehension of political economy turns’.35
This poses problems for the Unoists, who see the logic of capital as free-
ing itself from such contingent factors as forms of labour. They are especially
uncomfortable with the discussion of the dual character of labour in Chapter
30.â•‡ Sekine, 1997b, p. 216.

31.â•‡ Sekine 2000, p. 130.
32.â•‡ Albritton 1999, p. 38.
33.â•‡ Marx 1975r, p. 286.
34.â•‡ Marx 1975r, pp. 236–8.
35.â•‡ See Marx 1976e, p. 132.
One of Capital, which they leave out of their reconstructions of the dialectic
of capital.36
This is not to suggest that Uno and his followers set aside labour altogether.
They seek to take account of it by utilising levels-theory. The logic of capital cor-
responds to one level of analysis. The other level is actual history, which only
approximates the logic of capital. Contingent factors like conditions of labour,
production-relations, and resistance to capital occur on the level of histori-
cal analysis. For example, Albritton seeks to account for subjective resistance
even though his understanding of the logic of capital completely abstracts
from it: ‘Thus, although capital’s logic is always a totalizing force in modern
history, to the extent that it runs up against resistances, it can never consum-
mate a totality that is unified around an essence at the level of history’.37
There are benefits to such a levels-approach, since a major problem faced
by many thinkers is the temptation to conflate the logical analysis of a phe-
nomenon with its actual development. Kierkegaard addressed this: ‘A person
can be a great logician and become immortal through his services and yet
prostitute himself by assuming that the logical is the existential and that the
principle of contradiction is abrogated in existence because it is indisputably
abrogated in logic; whereas existence is the very separation that prevents the
logical flow’.38
As Albritton and other followers of Uno emphasise, the actual historical
development of capitalism often upsets the ‘logical flow’ of capital’s drive
to self-expand irrespective of human resistance or natural limitations. Marx
seems to have been conscious of this as well, as seen from his comment in
Capital:
Capitalist productionâ•›.â•›.â•›.â•›ruthlessly enforces its will despite obstacles which
are in any case largely of its own making. At all events, in order to portray
the laws of political economy in their purity we are ignoring these sources
of friction, as is the practice in mechanics when the frictions that arise have
to be dealt with in every particular application of its general laws.39
36.â•‡ See Sekine 1997a, which proceeds from ‘The Pricing of Commodities’ in Chapter
One to ‘The Functions of Money’ in Chapter Two to ‘The Operation of Capital’ in
Chapter Three, without bringing in the issue of labour. Labour and the production-
process are brought in later, in discussing the historical development of the capitalist
method of production.
37.â•‡ Albritton 1999, pp. 24–5.
38.â•‡ Kierkegaard 1992, p. 55.
39.â•‡ Marx 1976e, p. 1014. This is from the famous ‘Chapter Six’ of Capital, ‘Results
of the Immediate Process of Production’, published only after Marx’s death.
14 • Introduction
Nevertheless, the way in which Albritton views the relation between the logi-
cal and historical raises many questions. Although Marx analysed capital as a
product of specific conditions of production in which concrete labour becomes
dominated by abstract labour, Albritton defends Uno’s view that ‘value must
be thoroughly established and understood as a circulation form before its
substantive grounding in the production process can be understood’.40 In
doing so, he takes issue with Marx for what he calls the ‘weak and at times
ambiguous presentation of the labour theory of value in the early pages of
Capital’.41 He argues that Marx was ‘not fully cognisant of the above points
and hence does not theorize capital’s inner logic as a rigorous dialectical
logic’.42
The view that forms of circulation and the market define the logic of capital
leads Uno and some of his followers to conclude that the key to transcend-
ing capitalism is to abolish markets and establish state control of production.43
Albritton writes, ‘The USSR represented a huge effort to realise socialism and
its failure to do so is tragic. It was relatively successful in some areas and
less so in othersâ•›.â•›.â•›.â•›I disagree with [the] view that a planned economy can be
capitalist’.44
The Unoists are not wrong to contend that grasping the logic of capital
predetermines the understanding of its alternative. The problem is that their
view of the logic of capital comes to grief in light of this very insight. Their
claim that alienated labour is extrinsic to the logic of capital, whereas market-
anarchy and private property is intrinsic to it, leads them to conclude that the
abolition of the latter is the central precondition for a postcapitalist society.
This leads them to hold onto a rather traditional view of ‘socialism’, one that
is not likely to spark the imagination of a humanity that has absorbed the
disastrous experiences of centrally planned economies in Eastern Europe and
the USSR.45
40.â•‡ Albritton 1999, p. 75.

41.â•‡ Ibid.
42.â•‡ Albritton 2008, p. 88.
43.â•‡ See Albritton 1999, p. 180: ‘The capitalist epoch will come to be seen as one
which relied on incredibly crude economic mechanisms called “markets”.’ This tends
to overlook the fact that markets existed before capitalism and that the market is far
from being the distinguishing or defining feature of capitalism.
44.â•‡ Albritton 2004, p. 89.
45.â•‡ Sekine has a more critical attitude towards the former USSR, and a more expan-
sive view of socialism as consisting of transformed ecocommunities based on a balance
of production and consumption. It it is not clear, however, if such a position meshes
with his overall attitude to the determining role of markets. See Sekine 1990.
Another version of objectivist Marxism is found in the work of a number of

thinkers associated with the latter-day Frankfurt school, such as Hans-Georg
Backhaus. They seek to critically build on the insights of such pioneering fig-
ures of the Frankfurt school as Adorno, Horkheimer, Marcuse and Habermas
while placing greater emphasis than they did on political economy and the
exegesis of Marx’s Capital. In his influential and comprehensive work Dialektik
der Wertform. Untersuchungen zur Marxschen Ökonomiekritik, Backhaus argues
that Marx’s object of critique is not an empirically existing capitalism but
rather the abstract logic of capital.46 Like Uno and his followers, he emphasises
that, for Marx, the universal forms of capital are the object of investigation,
not its actual unfolding in history. Backhaus considers this of cardinal impor-
tance, since failure to grasp this leads to making the personifications of capital
(businessmen, speculators, etc.) the object of critique, instead of capital’s deep
structure. For Backhaus, the determining force of modern society is not the
capitalists but rather capital, which takes on a life of its own in a manner
analogous to Hegel’s concept of the absolute subject. He writes, ‘The fusion
of the subject-object inversion with the problem of the concept of capital is
the fundamental theme of Marx’s œuvre’.47 He further specifies, ‘Marx’s basic
thought, hitherto ignored by all economists, is that human beings confront
their own generic forces, that is their “collective forces” or “social forces” as
an autonomous, alien being. This thought culminates in the conception of the
autonomous totality of social capital as a real total subject, which abstracts
itself from the weal and woe of individual subjects and is “indifferent” to
them’.48
Backhaus attempts to show that ‘Marx describes capital as subject or as self-
relation’.49 In an argument that parallels the position of Uno and his followers,
he contends that Hegel’s Absolute Idea is ‘adequate’ to the Marxian concept
of capital. Capital, he argues, is not Marx’s least Hegelian work but his most
Hegelian work – even more ‘Hegelian’ than the 1844 Manuscripts.
Despite his affinity with some positions of the Unoists, there are major dif-
ferences between Backhaus and their approach. The most significant is that
Backhaus contends that the core of the logic of capital is not the market and
private property but the social form of labour. He argues that capital can
take the form of a self-determining subject that disregards contingency only
because the labour that produces it is subsumed by an abstraction. Whereas
46.â•‡ See Backhaus 1997.

47.â•‡ Backhaus 1992, p. 68.
48.â•‡ Backhaus 1992, p. 81.
49.â•‡ Backhaus 1992, p. 71.
16 • Introduction
the Unoists downplay the category of the dual character of labour in explain-
ing capital’s drive for self-expansion, Backhaus posits the concept of abstract
labour as central to it.50
These themes are further elaborated in Moishe Postone’s Time, Labor and
Social Domination: A Reinterpretation of Marx’s Critical Theory.51 Postone’s work
centres on a critique of what he calls the central flaw of ‘traditional Marxism’: its
transhistorical view of labour. By this he means the view of labour as an instru-
mental and socially-mediating activity that expresses the natural, species-
essence of humanity. Although this view has been widely attributed to Marx
by both his critics and followers, Marx himself held, as Postone shows, that
labour in this sense exists only in capitalism. Only in capitalism does labour
become the all-determining social relation, because only in capitalism does
labour take on a dual character.52 Its dual character lies in the opposition
between concrete labour and abstract labour. Concrete labour is the array of
differentiated forms of exertion that create useful products; abstract labour
is undifferentiated human labour, ‘labour in general’. The subsumption of
concrete labour by abstract labour through the medium of socially-necessary
labour-time reduces the former to a monotonous, repetitive, and routinised
activity. It comes to dominate all social interaction. For Marx, abstract labour
is the basis of value-production, which is specific to capitalism.
The problem with traditional Marxism, Postone suggests, is that it natu-
ralises the form of labour specific to capitalism by viewing it in metaphysical
terms. Traditional Marxism becomes so enamoured of the expansive power
of labour in transforming conditions of natural existence that it adopts an
affirmative attitude towards the very object of Marx’s critique – the reduction
of human contingency to the exigencies of abstract labour. It assumes that the
source of capitalism’s contradictions lies not in its alienating mode of labour
but, rather, in unequal forms of distribution. The market and private property
become seen as the main problem. Instead of grasping value as the expres-
sion of the specific kind of labour in capitalism, it becomes understood as a
50.â•‡ Backhaus suggests that Hegel’s writings, especially his First Philosophy of Spirit,
anticipated Marx’s concept of abstract labour. See Backhaus 1992, pp. 64–7.
51.â•‡ Although Backhaus’ Dialektik der Wertform was not published until 1997, sev-
eral initial chapters of it appeared earlier, in the 1970s, and were widely discussed in
Germany. Very little of his work is currently available in English.
52.â•‡ It is important not to conflate Marx’s famous contention that all forms of human
society possess a particular mode of production with the claim that ‘labour as such’ is
the defining and determining relation of all forms of society. Ancient Greek society,
for instance, had a particular mode of production, but the notion that ‘labour as such’
was the determining social form was so far from view that Aristotle contended that
‘action and production differ in kindâ•›.â•›.â•›.â•›Life consists in action, not production’. See
Aristotle 1998, p. 7 [1254a6–7].
‘blind’ mechanism regulating the exchange of commodities. For traditional

Marxism, the abolition of this blind mechanism through state-planning and
nationalised property is ‘socialism’. The ‘new society’ is defined as having the
nature of labour under capitalism – its role as a rational regulator of social
relations – come into its own, unimpeded by ‘market anarchy’. According to
‘the interpretation of value as a category of the market’, avers Postone, ‘the
same forms of wealth of labor that are distributed mediately in capitalism
would be coordinated in socialism’.53 Traditional Marxism assumes that ‘in
socialism the ontological principle of society appears openly, whereas in capi-
talism it is hidden’.54
Postone’s critique of traditional Marxism illuminates important dimensions
of the contemporary period. Many presume that the crisis of the welfare-state
in the West and the collapse of ‘actually existing socialism’ in the East provide
ample proof that capitalism has irretrievably triumphed over ‘socialism’ and
that ‘Marxism’ is dead. Yet such a viewpoint is valid only if the aporiae of
traditional Marxism are accepted. Marx held that the production of wealth is
not the same as the production of value. The latter is historically specific and
emerges only when labour assumes a dual character. This, not the existence
of private property or the market, constitutes the core of the logic of capital.
Whether surplus-value is appropriated by the state or the market is of second-
ary importance. Capitalism exists wherever the defining principle of social
organisation is the reduction of human labour to ever-more abstract forms of
value-creating labour. In this sense, what passed for ‘socialism’ turns out to be
the very object of Marx’s critique of capitalism. Postone concludes, ‘Far from
demonstrating the victory of capitalism over socialism, the recent collapse of
“actually existing socialism” could be understood as signifying the collapse
of the most rigid, vulnerable and oppressive form of state-interventionist
capitalism’.55
Postone also contends that traditional Marxism errs in proclaiming the
working class as the subject of social transformation. He argues, as do other
objectivists, that the subject of modern society is not the human-being but
capital. Capital takes on a life of its own because the subjectivity of workers
becomes subsumed by abstract labour. Neither the workers nor any other
social force can therefore be considered subjects of liberation. Since self-
initiative and creative unfolding characterises capital and not labour, we must
look not to proletarian class-struggle but to capital to point the way towards
53.â•‡ Postone 1993, p. 49.

54.â•‡ Postone 1993, p. 61.
55.â•‡ Postone 1993, p. 14.
18 • Introduction
the transcendence of capitalism. Postone goes as far as to contend that dead

labour is the emancipatory alternative.
Postone grounds this argument in the claim that the individuality of the
labourer cannot be distinguished from the value-form of labour-power. Since
workers cannot be separated from the value-form of their labouring activity
(at least insofar as they function as workers) subjecting capitalism to critique
from the standpoint of the labourer leads to adopting an affirmative attitude
towards the value-form of labour-power. Such a standpoint makes unequal
forms of distribution, instead of the nature of labour under capitalism, the
object of critique. Traditional Marxism goes no further than stressing the dif-
ference between the value of labour-power and the value of the total prod-
uct created by wage-labour. While such a standpoint may appear ‘radical’, it
really goes no further than the position of such classical political economists
as David Ricardo. Postone argues, ‘The identification of the proletariat (or the
species) with the historical Subject rests ultimately on the same historically
undifferentiated notion of “labor” as does Ricardian Marxism’.56
But if the working class or any other human agent is not the principle of
emancipation, how can capitalism be overcome? It is overcome, Postone sub-
mits, by capital itself. He addresses this by focusing on ‘the central contradic-
tion of capitalism’ – the drive to increase material wealth versus the drive to
augment value. Capitalism is driven not only to produce material goods and
services but also to augment value. Labour is the source of value and the mag-
nitude of value is determined by the amount of socially-necessary labour-time
it takes to produce a commodity. There is a continual contradiction between
the drive to produce material wealth and to augment value. As productivity
rises, more goods are produced in the same unit of time. Therefore, the value
of each commodity falls. The increase in material wealth corresponds to a
decline in the magnitude of value. Costs of production fall and prices tend to
fall as a result. This presents capitalists with a knotty problem: the relative fall
in the value of each commodity risks leaving them short of the funds needed
to maintain their level of productive output. They respond by trying to fur-
ther boost productivity, since the greater the quantity of goods produced,
the better the opportunity to realise the value of his initial investment. The
best way to increase productivity is to invest in labour-saving devices. The
resulting growth in productivity, however, reproduces the problem, since
the increase in material wealth leads to a further decrease in the relative value
of each commodity. Thus, capitalism is based on a kind of treadmill-effect in
56.â•‡ Postone 1993, p. 80.

which it is constantly driven towards technological innovation regardless of

the human or environmental cost. The result is as follows:
A growing disparity arises between developments in the productive powers
of labor (which are not necessarily bound to the direct labor of the workers),
on the one hand, and the value frame within which such developments
are expressed (which is bound to such labor), on the other. The disparity
between the accumulation of historical time and the objectification of
immediate labor time becomes more pronounced as scientific knowledge
is increasingly materialized in productionâ•›.â•›.â•›.â•›a growing disparity separates
the conditions for the production of material wealth from those for the
generation of value.57
The resulting ‘shearing pressure’ renders the system unstable. But how exactly
does this lead to an emancipatory future? Postone does not say. On the one
hand, he is trying to counter what is often seen as the pessimism of earlier
theorists of the Frankfurt school like Adorno and Marcuse by insisting that
capital is a two-dimensional entity that does not foreclose the possibility of
liberation. On the other hand, he leaves us with little sense of how to close
the gap between is and ought – especially since, as he emphasises, there is
no reason to presume that capitalism will ‘automatically collapse’. He writes,
‘overcoming the historical Subject’ – i.e. capital – ‘would allow people, for
the first time, to become the subjects of their own liberation’.58 However,
by refusing to identify human agents in the present who could help realise
such a future, it becomes hard to see how capital can actually be ‘overcome’.
Posing dead labour as the emancipatory alternative by pointing to the ‘shearing
pressure’ could hardly suffice so long as an automatic collapse of capitalism
is ruled out of consideration.
Postone therefore has little to say about either a postcapitalist future or how
to get there. What may be making it hard for him to do so is the theoretical
conception he is most attached to – that capital is the subject. Postone’s view of
this is based on a specific reading of Hegel. As he sees it, Hegel’s concept of
the absolute subject bears a striking similarity to the concept of capital, since it
is a self-moving substance that ‘grounds itself.’ He argues that Hegel’s Abso-
lute, as a self-referential entity, expresses the logic of capital as self-expanding
value. He contends that Marx based his analysis of capital on this Hegelian
notion, as seen in the chapter on ‘The General Formula of Capital’, in Capi-
tal, Volume I. There Marx writes, ‘value is here the subject’, ‘an automatic
57.â•‡ Postone 1993, p. 297.

58.â•‡ Postone 1993, p. 224.
20 • Introduction
subject’; he calls value ‘the dominant subject [übergreifendes Subjekt] of this

processâ•›.â•›.â•›.’.59
Though this may appear to confirm the claim that Marx views capital as the
absolute subject, the appearance is deceptive. It is important to keep in mind
the context of ‘The General Formula of Capital’. Marx is discussing the pro-
cess of circulation, as embodied in the movement from money to commodity
to more money (M-C-M’). This movement creates, by necessity, the appear-
ance that value ‘has the occult ability to add value to itself’.60 However, Marx
later shows that this appearance is dispelled once we enter the labour-process
and encounter capital’s dependence on living labour. As Marx shows in the
next chapter, ‘Contradictions in the General Formula’, value appears to self-
expand on its own account so long as we restrict ourselves to the process
of circulation. When we move to the production-process, however, we find
that capital’s claim to be the self-moving subject encounters internal limits,
flowing from the dual character of labour. This is why Marx did not use the
phrase ‘value as subject’ when he moved into the analysis of the production-
process of capital.61 As Marx wrote in the Grundrisse, capital ‘cannot ignite
itself anew through its own resources. Circulation therefore does not carry within
itself the principle of self-renewalâ•›.â•›.â•›.â•›Commodities therefore have to be thrown
into it anew from the outside, like fuel into a fire. Otherwise it flickers out in
indifference’.62
These and other passages indicate that Marx does think that capital takes
on the form of a self-moving substance or subject – insofar as we view capi-
tal from the viewpoint of the process of circulation. Postone, as noted above,
criticises ‘traditional Marxism’ for emphasising the process of circulation at
the expense of the forms of production. In opposition to this standpoint of
‘traditional Marxism’, he seeks to redirect radical theory towards a thor-
oughgoing critique of the production-relations of contemporary society. In
doing so, however, Postone imports a category that Marx uses to express the
circulation-process into an effort to highlight the dynamics of the production-
process. Despite his emphatic opposition to theoretical approaches that view
production-relations as a mere reflection of the process of circulation, he pri-
oritises a category that is actually adequate to the sphere of circulation. In a
59.â•‡ Marx 1976e, p. 255.

60.â•‡ Ibid.
61.â•‡ The development of Marx’s Capital further raises questions about Postone’s
claim that Marx posed capital or ‘dead labour’ as the subject. Marx revised Capital
substantially when he issued the French edition in 1872–5 and stated that it possesses
a ‘scientific value independent of the original’. In the French edition, Marx removed
all three references to capital and value as subject. See Marx 1989c, p. 124.
62.â•‡ Marx 1986a 28, p. 186. Emphases are in the original.
word, by conflating Marx’s discussion of value as ‘an automatic subject’ at a

specific point in the analysis of capitalist circulation with value as the absolute
subject in Marx’s analysis of capitalism as a whole, Postone contravenes his
own insistence concerning the importance of not elevating the sphere of dis-
tribution or circulation above that of production.
Since Postone thinks that capital is the subject of modern society, and not the
workers or other human forces of liberation, he is led to argue that the alter-
native to capital will ultimately emerge not from the development of human
agents like the proletariat but rather from capital itself. Capital is indeed the
emancipatory alternative for Postone. Yet what are the emancipatory forms that
we could expect to see emerge from the self-development of capital? Is there
a role for human subjectivity in overcoming capital, and if so, what is it? Aside
from mentioning in passing the way in which capital generates new needs
and desires, he does not say. Postone reaches something of an impasse when
it comes to addressing the specific forms of life which can replace the logic of
capital, especially since he (correctly) emphasises that simply abolishing the
market is not a solution.
The third grouping of objectivist Marxists are those who subscribe to ‘sys-
tematic dialectics’, an independent school of thought developed over the past
two decades. The most prominent of these theorists is C.J. Arthur, author of
The New Dialectic and Marx’s ‘Capital’. Arthur’s work falls in between the posi-
tions of the Unoists and Postone. Like the Unoists, he emphasises the distinc-
tion between the logic of capital and capitalism’s historical development. Like
Postone, he emphasises the homology between Marx’s delineation of the logic
of capital and Hegel’s logic of the concept. However, he differs from Pos-
tone in placing more emphasis on forms of circulation and monetary relations
than on production-relations, and he differs from the Unoists in placing more
emphasis on subjective forms of resistance to capital.
Arthur contends that most commentators on Marx have failed to come to
grips with the complexity of his ideas because they conflate historical dialec-
tics with systematic dialectics. Historical dialectics deals with the rise and fall
of actual social systems. Systematic dialectics, on the other hand, deals with
‘a given whole and demonstrates how it reproduces itself: thus the order-
ing of the categories is in no way determined by the recapitulation of a his-
torical chain of causality; it is articulated on the basis of purely systematic
considerations’.63 Marx’s Capital, he argues, is best understood as ‘the articu-
lation of categories to conceptualize an existent concrete whole’. The order
in which Marx presents the categories does not correspond to ‘the order of
63.â•‡ Arthur 2002, p. 64.

22 • Introduction
their actual appearance in history’.64 Capital consists of a sequential ordering of

abstract categories, not a consequential ordering of how they actually unfold in
history.
Arthur convincingly shows that conflating the historical with the systematic
has led to gross misunderstandings of Marx’s work, beginning with Marx’s
closest colleague and follower, Friedrich Engels. Marx’s discussion in Chap-
ter One of Capital on the commodity-form and the forms of value is notori-
ously difficult, and has given rise to numerous efforts to justify or reject the
apparent reliance on what Rosa Luxemburg once called ‘its Hegelian rococo’.65
An early attempt to make sense of these difficulties was offered by Engels,
who held that the development from the ‘simple’ to the ‘general’ or univer-
sal commodity-form in Chapter One referred to the historical development
from small-scale commodity-production to more complex forms in advanced
industrial capitalism. He held that Chapter One is best understood by discern-
ing the historical sequence implied by Marx’s analytical categories. Arthur finds
this highly specious. Chapter One, he says, has nothing to do with a historical
delineation of commodity-production. Although it begins with the ‘simple’
exchange of one product of labour for another, Marx is referencing not a par-
ticular historical stage (like small-scale or petty commodity-exchange) but
rather the determinate social form that characterises a chemically-pure capital-
ism. Marx begins with the most simple or abstract expression of the social form
that characterises capitalism in order to draw out the developmental logic
of capital as a whole. Just as Hegel begins his Science of Logic with the most
elementary and barren category, ‘Being’, that nevertheless implicitly contains
the whole, so Marx begins Capital with the most elementary expression of the
commodity-form that contains within itself the elements that call for system-
atic elaboration. Marx’s historical account of capitalism appears only at the
end of Volume I of Capital, not at the beginning, because the historical phe-
nomenon of capitalism can only be comprehended from the vantage-point of
the systemic and abstract logic of capital.66
The impatience to leap from the abstract to the concrete, from the system-
atic to the historical, explains why many have found Marx’s Capital difficult to
grasp. Even Engels conceded in letters to Marx, as he was reading the galley-
proofs of Chapter One, that he found it hard to follow the argument. Arthur
64.â•‡ Arthur 2002, p. 4.

65.â•‡ See Luxemburg 1978, p. 184.
66.â•‡ This is not to suggest that Marx makes references to historical development only
at the conclusion of Capital. In discussing money in Chapter Two, Marx does discuss the
historical sequence by which precious metals came to serve as money. This does not,
however, constitute a historical rendition of the development of capitalism itself.
writes that to adequately comprehend Marx, we need to recognise that ‘The

key transition in Capital is not from simple commodity production to capital-
ist production, but from the “sphere of simple circulation or the exchange of
commodities” to “the hidden abode of production”.’67
Like other objectivist Marxists, Arthur sees a homology between Marx’s Cap-
ital and Hegel’s Science of Logic. The homology may not be self-evident, since
Arthur assumes that ‘Hegel was an idealist’ whereas Marx was a ‘materialist’.68
The homology nevertheless exists, he argues, because capitalism is above all a
monetary economy characterised by the same kind of ‘immanent abstractness’
found in Hegel’s delineation of the logic of the concept. He writes, ‘In value-
form theory it is the development of the forms of exchange that is seen as the
prime determinant of the capitalist economy’.69 Hence, the forms of value and
capital analysed by Marx ‘are in effect of such abstract purity as to constitute a
real incarnation of the ideas in Hegel’s logic’.70 On these grounds ‘capital may
be seen as the avatar of Hegel’s absolute concept’.71
This places Arthur closer to the Unoists than to Postone, who contends
that production rather than exchange or monetary relations constitutes the
inner core of the logic of capital. Whereas Postone ties value-production to
the dual character of labour, Arthur asks ‘but can it make sense to speak of
value where there are no markets?’72 As Arthur sees it, labour can be brought
into the dialectic of capital only after the general form of value, or money, has
been delineated. He denies that the social form of labour is the defining or
constitutive feature of capital: ‘Labour and value are not to be positively iden-
tified with each other’.73 As he sees it, it is not that labour becomes abstract in
the process of production which then lends an abstractive character to value
and capital; instead, it is monetary or exchange-relations that render labour
abstract: ‘It may still be the case that labour becomes “abstract” only when
products are priced’.74
On these grounds, Arthur takes issue with Chapter One of Capital, which
discusses the dual character of labour prior to discussing the forms of value
and money. Arthur writes, ‘It is notorious that Marx dives down from the
phenomenon of exchange-value to labour as the substance of value in the first
67.â•‡ Arthur 2002, p. 24.

68.â•‡ Arthur 2002, p. 10.
69.â•‡ Arthur 2002, p. 11.
70.â•‡ Arthur 2002, p. 82.
71.â•‡ Arthur 2002, p. 141.
72.â•‡ Arthur 2002, p. 94.
73.â•‡ Arthur 2002, p. 40.
74.â•‡ Arthur 2002, p. 46. See also 157: ‘It is through exchange that abstraction imparts
itself to labour, making it abstract human labour’.
24 • Introduction
three pages of Capital and people rightly complain that they do not find any
proof there’.75 In contrast to Marx’s approach, he thinks that it is best to
.â•›.â•›.â•›leave aside initially any labour content – in this way I am departing from
Marx who analyzed both togetherâ•›.â•›.â•›.â•›I differ from Marx in that I refuse to
find it necessary to come to labour until after conceptualizing capital as a
form-determination. Bringing in labour too early risks giving the appearance
of model-building.76
He contends that, in Capital, ‘Marx has a dogmatic beginning in so far as he

presupposes the items exchanged are labour products’.77
Given the overriding importance that Marx ascribed to his category of
the dual character of labour, this raises the question of whether Arthur fully
does justice to the content of Capital. How do we square Arthur’s claim that
his ‘systematic-dialectical’ approach is best-suited to understanding Marx’s
actual aim and intent in Capital, when that very approach compels him to call
into question Marx’s exposition of what he called his ‘original contribution’
which is ‘crucial to an understanding of political economy’?78
Arthur also distances himself from the Unoists by arguing that labour is
not extrinsic to the dialectic of capital. Although he thinks that Marx was mis-
taken to bring forms of labour into Chapter One of Capital, he thinks that the
logic of capital never succeeds in completely freeing itself from dependence on
living labour. ‘The problem for capital’, he writes, ‘is that it needs the agency
of labour’79 in order to create surplus-value. In his view, labour needs to be
brought into the logic of capital in order to explain how the capitalist manages
to compel workers to produce more value than they themselves consume. At
this level of the logic of capital – that of the discrepancy between the value
of labour-power and the value of the total product – resistance is bound to
occur:80
The former ‘subjects’ of production are treated as manipulable objects; but
it is still a question of manipulating their activity, not of depriving them
of all subjectivity. They act for capital, indeed as capital, but still in some
sense actâ•›.â•›.â•›.â•›Thus, even if Marx is right that the productive power of labour
75.â•‡ Arthur 2002, p. 12.

76.â•‡ Arthur 2002, pp. 79–80, 85.
77.â•‡ Arthur 2002, pp. 157–8.
78.â•‡ Marx 1976e, p. 132.
79.â•‡ Arthur 2002, p. 52.
80.â•‡ Albritton responds thus: ‘Because of the way Arthur inserts class struggle
into the dialectic of capital, it becomes impossible to theorize capital’s inner logic as
a whole dialecticallyâ•›.â•›.â•›.â•›Class struggle, strictly speaking, is outside the theory’. See
Albritton 2005, pp. 179, 182.
is absorbed into that of capital to all intents, it is necessary to bear in mind

that capital still depends on it. Moreover, the repressed subjectivity of the
workers remains a threat to capital’s purposes in this respect.81
What does Arthur’s ‘systematic dialectics’ suggest about a possible alterna-

tive to capitalism? Like most objectivists, he prefers to say little about the
future on the grounds that the main burden of a Marxian critique consists
of tracing out the trajectory of capital. Although he finds a place for subjec-
tive resistance within the logic of capital, he refrains from suggesting that
it contains any immanent indication of the content of a new society. Still,
the considerable emphasis that he places on market and monetary relations
suggests that he considers the abolition of the market the pons asini of the
negation of capitalism. On these grounds, he rejects Postone’s characterisa-
tion of the USSR and other state-command economies as ‘state-capitalist’. At
the same time, he is very critical of Soviet-type régimes because their reliance
on extra-economic force to spur economic growth led to gross inefficiencies.
He writes, ‘A negation of capital that fails to go beyond capital is necessar-
ily a negation of capital that falls behind capital’.82 What might constitute a
negation of capital that truly transcends capital, however, is a matter that his
work leaves largely unaddressed.
A diverse group of thinkers who have developed a very different approach
from the objectivists are autonomist Marxists. I refer to them as subjectivists
because they contend that the focus of Marx’s work is delineating the forms of
subjective resistance that arise against the logic of capital. They distance them-
selves from the arguments of the objectivists in a number of important ways.
First, instead of viewing labour and capital as distinct, externally-connected
entities, they hold that capital emerges and develops in response to struggles
against oppression and exploitation. Workers not only resist the development
of capital, but their resistance is also responsible for the very constitution of
capital. Mario Tronti articulated this position as early as 1964: ‘We too have
worked with a concept that puts capitalist development first, and workers
second. This was a mistake. And now we have to turn the problem on its
head, reverse the polarity and start again from the beginning: and the begin-
ning is the class struggle of the working class’.83
Each stage of capitalist production, Tronti and other autonomists argue,
took shape in response to specific forms of mass resistance. Though it appears
81.â•‡ Arthur 2002, p. 52.

82.â•‡ Arthur 2002, p. 211.
83.â•‡ Tronti 1979, p. 1.
26 • Introduction
that capital is in control of modern society, it is actually a reactive, not creative

force.84
Second, instead of viewing capital as a self-determining movement that
effaces barriers to its self-expansion, they argue that it is an inherently unsta-
ble and antagonistic form constantly torn between the drive to augment value
and the struggles that resist value-production. Antonio Negri writes, ‘The
focus in Marx is always the actuality and the determinacy of the antagonism’.85
John Holloway develops these issues as follows:
The defining feature of Marxist economics is the idea that capitalism can
be understood in terms of certain regularities (the so-called laws of motion
of capitalist development). These regularities refer to the regular (but
contradictory) pattern of the reproduction of capital, and Marxist economics
focuses on the study of capital and its contradictory reproductionâ•›.â•›.â•›.â•›The
attempts to use Marx’s own categories to develop a theory of capitalist
reproduction are, however, always problematic, in so far as the categories
of Marxism derive from a quite different question, based not on the
reproduction but on the destruction of capitalism, not on positivity but
on negativityâ•›.â•›.â•›.â•›By a strange twist, Marxism, from being a theory of the
destruction of capitalist society, becomes a theory of its reproduction.86
Third, whereas the objectivists emphasise Marx’s contributions to economics

and the intersections between philosophy and economics, the autonomists
see Marx’s project primarily in political terms. Negri writes, ‘Clearly, profit
and wage continue to exist, but they exist only as quantities regulated by
a relation of powerâ•›.â•›.â•›.â•›If anything, the marketing of labour-power today has
become a totally political operation’.87
Fourth, whereas all of the objectivists agree that Marx is deeply indebted
to Hegel, the autonomists often see Marx’s philosophical lineage quite dif-
ferently. Negri argues that Marx’s thought draws most of all from the pre-
Kantian philosophy of Spinoza. Holloway argues that Marx’s work can best
be understood from the vantage-point of Frankfurt-school Marxist Theodor
Adorno’s Negative Dialectics.
84.â•‡ As Holloway 2002, p. 143 puts it: ‘Class struggle does not take place within the
constituted forms of capitalist social relations; rather the constitution of those forms
is itself a class struggle’.
85.â•‡ Negri 1988, p. 221.
86.â•‡ Holloway 2002, pp. 134, 136.
87.â•‡ Negri 1988, pp. 224–5.
Since the writings of the autonomist Marxists are numerous and diverse,
I will focus on what many consider a defining text of the tendency: Antonio
Negri’s Marx Beyond Marx: Lessons on the ‘Grundrisse’.88
Negri’s influential work consists of a close analysis of Marx’s Grundrisse,
his ‘rough draft’ of Capital which was written in 1857–8. Marx’s massive nine-
hundred-page tome was unknown prior to the 1930s, and it has long been
considered one of Marx’s most enigmatic and difficult texts. Negri focuses
on this work because it is ‘the point where the objective analysis of capital
and the subjective analysis of class behavior come together’.89 It is a counter
to what he considers ‘the blind objectivism of a certain Marxist tradition’.90
As he sees it, the Grundrisse is superior to Capital because the latter suffers
from precisely what the Unoists and the theorists of systematic dialectics find
attractive in it – ‘a certain objectivism’ in which economic categories take on
a life of their own:
The movement of the Grundrisse toward Capital is a happy process; we
cannot say the same of the reverse movement. The Grundrisse represents the
summit of Marx’s revolutionary thoughtâ•›.â•›.â•›.â•›Capital is this text which served
to reduce critique to economic theory, to annihilate subjectivity in objectivity,
to subject the subversive capacity of the proletariat to the reorganizing and
repressive intelligence of capitalist power.91
The Grundrisse, writes Negri, is ‘an essentially open workâ•›.â•›.â•›.â•›the categories are
not flattened out, the imagination does not stagnate’.92 What many find for-
bidding about this work – what Marx once called ‘its sauerkraut and carrots
shapelessness’ – is seen by Negri as a virtue, since it allows the antagonistic
and unstable nature of the Marxian value-categories to come more readily
to the fore.
This is most directly seen in how ‘in the Grundrisse work appears as imme-
diately abstract labour’.93 Although the book begins with a lengthy chapter
on ‘Money’, Marx makes it clear (more so than in Capital, according to Negri)
that money can serve as a universal equivalent of commodity-exchange only
if living labour is already subsumed by a disembodied abstraction. Money
conceals this process, since (as Marx put it) ‘all inherent contradictions of bour-
geois society appear extinguished in money relations as conceived in a simple
88.â•‡ I have addressed Holloway’s work in more detail elsewhere. See Hudis
2004b.
89.â•‡ Negri 1984, p. 9.
90.â•‡ Negri 1984, p. 13.
91.â•‡ Negri 1984, pp. 18–19.
92.â•‡ Negri 1984, p. 12.
93.â•‡ Negri 1984, p. 10.
28 • Introduction
form’.94 Negri contends that Marx’s genius is expressed in his ability to anal-
yse the fetishised forms of money in light of the hidden social relations of
labour. Money can become the universal equivalent only if concrete labour
is subsumed by abstract labour; but abstract labour is produced in the same
instant as concrete labour by the living labourer. An internal tension is built
into all of Marx’s value-theoretical categories, including such abstract ones
as money. The subjectivity of the labourer can therefore never be abstracted
from the logic of capital. Negri writes, ‘Marx characterizes the working class
as a solid subjectivityâ•›.â•›.â•›.â•›as an historical and social essenceâ•›.â•›.â•›.â•›its essence as
creator of value is engaged in a continual struggle’.95
Negri argues that this subject-object dynamic is especially pronounced in
Marx’s theory of crisis, which was first formulated in the Grundrisse. Central
to this theory of crisis is the concept of the tendency for the rate of profit
to decline. In the Grundrisse, Negri writes, the decline in profit-rates is not
treated as a function of quasi-automatic economic laws operating on their
own. Capitalists try to maintain or boost profit-rates by increasing the pro-
portion of surplus-labour (labour-time that is beyond that needed to reproduce
the labourer) relative to necessary labour (labour-time needed to reproduce the
labourer). However, there are ‘rigid limits’ beyond which necessary labour
cannot be further reduced, since capital needs the living labourer to produce
value. Capital nevertheless pushes against this rigid limit, and the labourers
respond by intensifying their resistance to the drive to diminish the sphere of
necessary labour. As a result, capitalism is unable to extract as much surplus-
value as previously, leading to a decline in the rate of profit. Negri concludes,
‘The law of the tendency to decline represents, therefore, one of the most lucid
Marxist intuitions of the intensification of the class struggle in the course of
capitalist development’.96
As Negri acknowledges, Marx further developed his concept of the ten-
dency of the rate of profit to decline in what was to become Capital, Volume III.
There, Marx ties the decline not only to the contradiction between necessary
and surplus-labour, but also to the rising organic composition of capital. As
capitalists invest in greater amounts of technology and labour-saving devices,
the amount of value-creating labour declines relative to constant capital, pre-
cipitating a decline in profit-rates. Negri finds this to be a step backwards
from the Grundrisse, since it attributes the decline in profit rates to purely
objective factors. In Capital, he contends, ‘The entire relation will be dislocated
94.â•‡ Marx 1986a, p. 172.

95.â•‡ Negri 1984, p. 73.
96.â•‡ Negri 1984, p. 101.
on an economistic level and objectified improperly’. It is an approach that

‘eliminates the class struggle as a fundamental and rigid variable’.97
No part of the Grundrisse better exemplifies Marx’s prioritisation of sub-
jective resistance, he argues, than the discussion of the cooperative form of
labour. Marx indicates that the ‘real’ or total subsumption of labour by capital
does not efface agency, since workers forge bonds of association and coopera-
tion as they are brought together in productive enterprises. The centralisation
of capital necessitates a greater socialisation of labour. The more that labourers
are socialised, the more they learn how to cooperatively battle capital: ‘This
objective process, dominated by capital, begins to reveal the new subjective
level of the working class. A qualitative leap occurs: the unity of working class
behaviors begins to be self-sufficient.’98 Living labour develops from being
a component part of capital to taking on ‘constituent power’. This ‘power is
established politically on that social cooperation that is congenital to living
labourâ•›.â•›.â•›.â•›in the cooperative immediacy of living labour, constituent power
finds its creative massification’.99
This reading of the Grundrisse, which informs all of his later work, takes
Negri far from objectivist readings of Marx. He sums up his position as fol-
lows: ‘In so far as we refuse the objectivist interpretations of the “school of
capital-logic” – which infinitely assert the power of capital to possess and com-
mand all development – in so far as we reject this, it seems to us that we must
also avoid the path of subjectivity which imputes capital to an objectification tout
court’.100 Instead of focusing one-sidedly on capital-as-subject, Negri holds,
we should recognise that all of the categories employed by Marx are two-
dimensional and inherently antagonistic. Hence, capital cannot ‘self-expand’
unless labour does as well: ‘The other subject, the worker, must emerge, since
capitalist subsumption does not efface its identity but just dominates its activ-
ity: this subject must emerge precisely at the level to which the collective force
of social capital has led the process. If capital is a subject on one side, on the other
labour must be a subject as well’.101
â•‡ 97.â•‡ Ibid. Negri’s claim is highly questionable, however, since the last chapter of the
Grundrisse also ties the decline in the rate of profit to such ‘objective’ and ‘economic’
factors as the organic composition of capital.
â•‡ 98.â•‡ Negri 1984, p. 124.
â•‡ 99.â•‡ Negri 1999, p. 32. Although the term ‘constituent power’ is not found in Marx
Beyond Marx, Negri’s later use of this term flows directly from this earlier work’s
discussion of the cooperative form of labour. In his more recent work ‘constituent
power’ is not restricted by Negri to the industrial working class, but is applied to the
‘multitude’ that resists the dominating framework of ‘Empire’.
100.â•‡ Negri 1984, p. 132.
101.â•‡ Negri 1984, p. 123.
30 • Introduction
Although Negri’s effort to account for agency illuminates important aspects

of Marx’s work, one can ask whether his interpretation takes matters too far.
Is it really the case that every stage of capitalist development is a product of
heightened subjective resistance? Negri thinks so, as seen from his analysis of
the major changes in contemporary capitalism. In Empire and Multitude, Negri
and Hardt identify two such shifts: one is the 1970s, when capitalism aban-
doned the ‘Fordist’ model of mass-industrial production stimulated by Keynes-
ian fiscal policies, and the other is the 1990s and 2000s, when the axis of power
shifted from imperial nation-states towards an integrated global system. Both
changes, they contend, represented capital’s response to intensifying subjec-
tive resistance. The first came in response to the increased bargaining power
and strikes of workers as well as the mass-movements of the 1960s, while the
second, they contend, came in response to more diffuse forms of resistance
as proletarian or industrial labour was replaced by struggles of the ‘mass’ or
‘social worker’ – those employed in the service-sector, the domestic sphere,
etc. It seems highly questionable, however, that the move towards a globally-
integrated world-capitalism was a response to intensifying struggles by ‘new
forms of constitutive power’, given the political quiescence that has prevailed
in the dominant capitalist nations, especially over the last several decades. It
also seems questionable whether the decline of corporate profit-rates claimed
by some analysts has come as a direct result of intensified social struggles.
Even more questions can be raised about whether the autonomist approach
takes us further than the objectivists when it comes to envisaging an alter-
native to capitalist value-production. According to Negri ‘there is no value
without exploitation’; hence, a postcapitalist society is ‘the destruction at
the same time of the law of value itself, of its capitalist or socialist variants’.102
A new society can only mean ‘the destruction of capital in every sense of the
term. It is non-work, it is the subjective, collective and proletarian planning
of the suppression of exploitation. It is the possibility of a free constitution of
subjectivity’.103
But what specific forms of social organisation are needed to end value-
production and capital? What model or arrangement of society can allow
for the ‘free constitution of subjectivity’? Negri thinks it is pointless to try to
answer such questions, since a new society can only emerge from the forms of
socialisation and cooperation arising from spontaneous struggles: ‘In [Marx’s]
materialist methodology the only kind of anticipation allowed is the one that
moves in the rhythm of the tendency. This is therefore a complete refusal of
102.â•‡ Negri 1984, p. 83.

103.â•‡ Negri 1984, p. 169.
utopia and a limitation on his research on the contemporary historical limits

of capitalist development’.104
Negri and Hardt make this explicit in Empire by suggesting that the quest
for a new society is so immanent in everyday struggles that there is no need
to theoretically articulate an ultimate goal: ‘Empire creates a greater poten-
tial for revolution than did the modern régimes of power because it pres-
ents usâ•›.â•›.â•›.â•›with an alternative: a multitude that is directly opposed to Empire,
with no mediation between them’.105 The transcendence of capital occurs quasi-
automatically, from the exuberance of the multitude overflowing the bound-
aries of capital.
Although Negri is highly critical of theories that emphasise the automatic-
ity of capital’s self-expansion, he seems to fall prey to embracing automaticity
in another guise, insofar as he thinks that an alternative to capitalism will
arise spontaneously, without the mediation of theoretical labour that tries to
envisage future modes of social organisation.106 ‘Exuberance’, after all, has
no necessary connection to thought – let alone conceptual thought that tries to
envisage the future. Despite (or perhaps because of ) his subjectivist approach,
he does not have much more to say about a postcapitalist society than the
objectivists do.
Although most of the re-examinations of Marx’s work over the last several
decades can be characterised as primarily objectivist or subjectivist, the work
of several thinkers does not fall neatly into these categories, even if they share
some similarities with them. One such thinker is Tony Smith. Although he
advocates what I have termed the objectivist position of systematic dialectics,
he has major differences with some of its proponents. He places much more
emphasis on labour and resistance than Arthur does, and he also has a very
different view of the Hegel-Marx relation. In contrast to all of the objectivists
reviewed in this study, Smith does not agree that there is a homology between
the logic of capital and Hegel’s logic of the concept in the Science of Logic.
He writes,
The picture of Hegel trying to deduce the content of nature and spirit from
his logical categories is a myth that caricatures what we now know of his
actual working proceduresâ•›.â•›.â•›.â•›Those who go to the chapter on the Absolute
Idea looking for some metaphysical supersubject will be disappointed; it
104.â•‡ Negri 1999, p. 264.

105.â•‡ Hardt and Negri 2000, p. 393.
106.â•‡ The same problem is exhibited in the work of C.L.R. James, who once pro-
claimed that ‘the new society already exists; we merely have to record the facts of its
existence’. For a critical evaluation of James’s legacy, see Hudis 2005b.
32 • Introduction
consists entirely of an account of the dialectical methodology used in the

Logic as a whole.107
Smith does not deny that capital is a ‘supersubject’. He does deny that Marx
based his view of capital on Hegel’s logic of the concept, since the latter does
not blot out or annul particularity and contingency.
This has important ramifications for envisaging a new society, since Smith
contends that the concluding book to Hegel’s Science of Logic, the ‘Doctrine of
the Concept’ [Notion], which centres on his concept of the Syllogism, actu-
ally ‘provides the framework for comprehending socialism, not capitalism’.108
Through a close textual reading of the Science of Logic, Smith argues that Hegel
does not privilege any of the three terms of the syllogism – Universal, Particu-
lar, and Individual – but, rather, presents them as irreducible components.
Universality does not ‘blot out’ the particular or the individual; it rather
enables both to be expressed and cognised. Therefore, he argues, the logic of
the concept cannot be the correlate of capital’s abstract universality, which is
completely indifferent to particularity and contingency. As he sees it, Hegel,
like Marx, ‘wants a totality that does not blot out the principle of subjectivity,
individuality, personality. And this is what is termed socialism’.109
The implication is that we can gain greater insight into Marx’s concept
of a new society – and perhaps even further explain that concept for today’s
realities – by exploring more closely the actual content of Hegel’s most
abstract works, including the conclusion of his Science of Logic.110
Another thinker who does not readily fit into the category of subjectivist or
objectivist is Raya Dunayevskaya. Not unlike the autonomists, she stresses
that all of Marx’s value-theoretical categories are tightly tied to conditions of
labour and struggles that challenge the hegemony of value-production. She
writes that ‘Economics is a matter not only of the economic laws of break-
down of capitalism, but of the strife between the worker and the machine
against dead labour’s domination over living labour, beginning with hearing
the worker’s voice, which has been “stifled in the storm and stress of the pro-
cess of production”.’111 However, unlike Negri and the autonomists, she does
not deny that capital is defined by a ‘law of motion’ that develops indepen-
107.â•‡ Smith 1993, pp. 18, 29.

108.â•‡ Smith 1993, p. 29.
109.â•‡ Smith 1993, p. 31.
110.â•‡ Although there are few direct references to the last chapter of Hegel’s Science
of Logic in Marx’s works, he directly commented, and at considerable length, on the
concluding chapter of Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit, ‘Absolute Knowledge.’ Although
Marx’s notes on this chapter are of considerable importance, they have long been
neglected. An English translation is found in the Appendix, below, pp. 216–21.
111.â•‡ Dunayevskaya 1981, p. 140.
dent of the will of the producers (Note her use of the phrase ‘not only of the
economic laws’ in the above.) Instead of reducing every stage of capitalism to
a response to subjective revolt, she argues that Marx has a more nuanced view
that avoids posing a one-to-one relation between the objective and subjec-
tive. Moreover, she rejects Negri’s contention that Capital is more ‘objectivist’
and ‘economistic’ than the Grundrisse, even though she acknowledges that it
analyses a chemically-pure capitalism. She writes, ‘In the last part of the work,
“Accumulation of Capital”, as we approach the most “economist” and “sci-
entific” development – “the organic composition of capital” – Marx reminds
us all over again that this organic composition cannot be considered outside
of its effects “on the lot of the labouring classes’.112 Marx, she contends, traces
out the logic of capital as an objective movement while keeping his finger on
the pulse of human relations.
Dunayevskaya also has a distinctive view of the Hegel-Marx relation. First,
she does not accept the prevailing assumption that Hegel is an ‘idealist’ and
Marx is a ‘materialist’. She notes that Hegel has a materialist dimension and
that there are idealist components in Marx. Second, she argued (even more
forcefully than Smith) that Hegel’s ‘Doctrine of the Concept’ does not annul
particularity and contingency. She particularly calls attention to the inclusion
of the chapter on ‘Life’ near the end of the ‘Doctrine of the Concept’ in the
Science of Logic. She notes that Hegel wrote that his logic of the concept (to use
his own words) should be viewed not as ‘a mere abstract Universal, but as
a Universal which comprises in itself the full wealth of Particulars’.113 Hegel
in fact repeatedly emphasises that the ‘Idea has its reality in some kind of
matter’.114 As she sees it, the ‘whole Logic (both logic and Logic) is a logic
of self-determination’, but that does not mean that it annuls objectivity. The
logic of the concept cannot be so easily reduced to the logic of capital. Third,
she argues that the last chapter of the Logic, the ‘Absolute Idea’, which centres
on the ‘the negation of the negation’, is of great importance in illuminating
Marx’s concept of a new society, since both the 1844 Manuscripts and Capital
explicitly refer to the transcendence of capitalism in terms of ‘the negation
of the negation.’115 On these grounds, she argues that the realities of our era
make it imperative to return directly to Hegel’s Absolutes in working out a
conception of the alternative to capitalism. Fourth, she denies that Hegel’s
Absolutes represent a closure or the ‘end of history’. So imbued are Hegel’s

113.â•‡ Hegel 1979, p. 58.
114.â•‡ Hegel 1979, p. 759. See also Dunayevskaya 2002, p. 71.
115.â•‡ In the 1844 Manuscripts Marx writes, ‘Communism is the position as the nega-
tion of the negation’. See Marx 1975r, p. 306. See also Marx 1976e, p. 929.
34 • Introduction
Absolutes with negativity that each high point is but the jumping-off point for
new beginnings:
Whatever Hegel said, and meant, about the Owl of Minerva spreading
its wings only at dusk simply does not follow from the objectivity of the
drive, the summation in which the advance is immanent in the present.
While he neither gave, nor was interested in, any blueprints for the future,
he was not preoccupied with death, the ‘end’ of philosophy, much less
of the worldâ•›.â•›.â•›.â•›When subjected to the dialectical method from which,
according to Hegel, no truth can escape, the conclusion turns out to be a
new beginning. There is no trap in thought. Though it is finite, it breaks
through the barriers of the given, reaches out, if not to infinity, surely
beyond the historic moment.116
At the same time, Dunayevskaya does not argue that Marx’s work is a mere
application of Hegelian categories. Although Capital owes much to Hegel’s
Logic, she argues that it also represents a sharp departure from it. This is
because the subject of Hegel’s dialectic is disembodied thought, whereas the
subject in Capital is the human-being who resists capital’s ‘process of suction’.
She writes,
Capitalâ•›.â•›.â•›.â•›is the Great Divide from Hegel, and not just because the subject
is economics rather than philosophyâ•›.â•›.â•›.â•›It is that Great Divide because, just
because, the Subject – not subject matter, but Subject – was neither economics
nor philosophy but the human being, the masses. Because dead labour
(capital) dominates over living labour, and the labourer is the ‘gravedigger
of capitalism’, all of human existence is involved. This dialectic is therefore
totally new, totally internal, deeper than ever was the Hegelian dialectic
which had dehumanized the self-development of humanity in the dialectic
of Consciousness, Self-Consciousness, Reason. Marx could transcend the
Hegelian dialectic not by denying that it was ‘the source of all dialectic’;
rather, it was precisely because he began with that source that he could make
the leap to the live Subject who is the one who transforms reality.117
According to the above interpretation, the problem that Marx has with Hegel
is not that Hegel is an idealist who ignores empirical realities like econom-
ics or the labour-process. Nor is Marx distinguished from Hegel in being an
economist, instead of a philosopher. Instead, Marx departs from Hegel over
the latter’s failure to pose the labourer as the active subject of the dialectical
process. In doing so, Hegel is led to violate his own principle insofar as he

is compelled to reach for an force standing outside and above the historical
process – disembodied ‘absolute spirit’ – to resolve its contradictions. Marx’s
effort to correct this deficiency in Hegel leads him to posit workers as the
actual subject.
The philosophical literature on Marx over the past several decades clearly
reveals a wide disparity of interpretations and approaches. It should only
be expected that Marx would be subject to such widely varying interpreta-
tions, given the expansive and contentious nature of his philosophical project.
What is clear, however, is that many of the approaches towards Marx settle
for analysing one aspect of his œuvre at the expense of others. Except for Back-
haus, all of the objectivists considered in this study focus on Capital while
passing over the work of the young Marx, especially the 1844 Manuscripts.
Negri and the autonomists, on the other hand, emphasise the Grundrisse at the
expense of Capital and say little about Volumes II and III of Capital. Almost
none of the thinkers surveyed say anything about the last decade of Marx’s
life, when he turned his attention to the study of precapitalist societies. The
tendency to fragment Marx by studying aspects of his work in isolation from
others has not only made it difficult to evaluate whether or not Marx’s body of
work is internally coherent, it has created a major obstacle to coming to grips
with Marx’s concept of the transcendence of value-production. Since Marx
never devoted a work to the alternative to capitalism, and since any implicit
or explicit suggestions on his part about an alternative have to be gleaned
from a careful study of an array of diverse and difficult texts, the tendency to
analyse one part of Marx’s œuvre at the expense of others has made it all the
harder to discern whether he has a distinctive concept of a new society that
addresses the realities of the twenty-first century.
Bertell Ollman addresses this problem in noting that the theorists of sys-
tematic dialectics are unable to take account of the whole of Marx’s Capital,
since it clearly contains not only logical but also historical analysis. He writes,
‘Capital I contains whole sections that, according to the proponents of Sys-
tematic Dialecticsâ•›.â•›.â•›.â•›simply don’t belong there or are simply out of place’.118
I would add that this also applies to many of the subjectivist theorists who
cannot account for parts of Marx’s work that emphasise systematic and objec-
tive approaches. It is possible, of course, that different philosophical tenden-
cies can latch onto one or another angle of Marx’s thought because he was an
inconsistent and contradictory thinker who invites divergent interpretations.
Yet it is also possible, as Ollman notes, that many interpretations of his work
represent ‘misguided attempts to reduce Marx’s varied strategies to a single
118.â•‡ Ollman 2003, pp. 183–4.

36 • Introduction
oneâ•›.â•›.â•›.â•›at the expense of the others’.119 It is possible that Marx employed a host
of argumentative and conceptual strategies based on his specific concerns and
object of investigation, and it is all too easy to fall into one-sided readings
which fail to take account of his work as a whole. However, if we cannot make
sense of Marx’s work as a whole, is it really possible to discern whether or
not his work contains a concept of a new society that is worth re-examining
today? With this in mind, it is time to return to the whole of Marx, with new
eyes.
119.â•‡ Ollman 2003, pp. 187–8.

Chapter One
The Transcendence of Alienation in the
Writings of the Young Marx
In the general relationship which the philosopher sees

between the world and thought, he merely makes
objective for himself the relation of his own particular
consciousness to the real world.
Karl Marx (1841)1
Marx’s beginnings, 1837–41

Two aspects of Marx’s early work are of concern to
us here. One aspect is the values and principles that
the young Marx upheld and brought to bear on his
subsequent analysis of capitalist production.2 It is
hardly conceivable that Marx could have developed
such a thoroughgoing and virulent criticism of capi-
talism merely on the basis of a descriptive analysis
of contemporary conditions. What normative stand-
point led him to call into question the central prin-
ciples and practices of capitalism in the first place?
1.â•‡ Marx 1975d, p. 42.

2.â•‡ The writings of the young Marx may not appear to be the best place to begin
a study of his conception of the alternative to capitalism. Marx’s writings from 1837
to 1843 were largely composed when he was still a liberal democrat who had not
yet broken with capitalism, and they contain little or no explicit critique of capitalist
value-production. Moreover, the numerous writings composed by him in the years
immediately following his break with capitalism (1843/4 to 1847) do not contain the
extensive analyses and criticisms of value-production that defines his later work,
such as Capital.
Nevertheless, I will seek to show that these early writings constitute the basis of
Marx’s conception of the alternative to capitalism that became fleshed out in his later
work.
38 • Chapter One
Why did he come to find such formations as private property, alienated

labour, class-society, and the separation of the state and civil society so objec-
tionable? An analysis of Marx’s early writings – including those composed
before his break with capitalism – are of indispensable importance in answer-
ing these questions. The second aspect is the specific indications provided by
his early writings, especially those composed from 1843/4 to 1847, as to what
might constitute an alternative to capitalism. Although his early works rarely
specify the institutional forms needed to replace capitalism,3 Marx’s philo-
sophical engagement with the social and intellectual realities of the 1840s led
him to develop a specific conception of the transcendence of alienation that
is of indispensable importance in understanding his overall understanding of
the alternative to capitalism.
I will seek to demonstrate this by beginning with Marx’s earliest extant
writings. One of the first, an 1837 letter to his father, represents a kind of state-
ment of philosophical conversion. After having been under the ‘spell’ of Kant
and Fichte, the 19 year-old Marx declares that he has now become committed
to Hegelianism. What drives this change of mind is his dissatisfaction with
the ‘opposition between what is and what ought to be’.4 Attacking his earlier
views as ‘entirely idealistic’ and ‘formalist’, he proclaims that ‘the object must
be studied in its development; arbitrary divisions must not be introduced,
the rational character of the object itself must develop as something imbued
with contradictions in itself and find its unity in itself’.5 He considers his prior
philosophical standpoint, which counterposed form and matter, an egregious
error and contends that he has now ‘arrived at the point of seeing the idea
in reality itself. If previously the gods had dwelt above the earth, now they
became its center’.6
This conception of the idea as immanently contained within the real does
not mean that Marx has decided to reject ‘idealism’ in favour of ‘materialism’.
As he writes a few years later in his doctoral dissertation on ancient Greek
3.â•‡ As David Leopold has argued, ‘the most that can be extracted’ along these lines
from Marx’s early writings are ‘quasi-institutional threads’. While I concur with this
assessment, I will aim to demonstrate that these ‘threads’ are of considerable impor-
tance – both in their own right and for understanding Marx’s subsequent develop-
ment. See Leopold 2007, p. 246.
4.â•‡ Marx 1975b, p. 12.
5.â•‡ Ibid. Marx’s comment hews closely to Hegel’s formulation in the Science of Logic:
‘This is what Plato demanded of cognition, that it should consider things in and for
themselves, that is, should consider them partly in their universality, but also that
it should not stray away from them by catching at circumstances, examples and
comparisons, but should keep before it solely the things themselves and bring before
consciousness what is immanent in them’. See Hegel 1979a, p. 830.
6.â•‡ Marx 1975b, p. 18.
The Transcendence of Alienation • 39
philosophy, ‘Idealism is no figment of the imagination, but a truth’.7 Marx is

searching for a way to conceptualise the ideal as integrally connected to the
real. This is but the first expression of a theme that will show up again and
again in Marx’s work and which will largely determine his attitude towards
efforts to propose alternatives to existing realities.
This is not to suggest that the integrality of ideality and reality are the only
normative concerns of the young Marx. His very earliest writings also display
a powerful feeling for social justice. As he wrote in his very first extant piece,
‘The chief guide which must direct us in the choice of a profession is the wel-
fare of mankind and our own perfectionâ•›.â•›.â•›.â•›man’s nature is so constituted that
he can attain his own perfection only by working for the perfection, for the
good, of his fellow men’.8
What is important to watch is how these two seemingly separate9
concerns – social justice and a philosophical commitment to the immanence of
the ideal within the real – helped to predetermine and shape Marx’s approach
to a host of different problems.
Marx’s interest in the relation between philosophy and reality dictated the
subject-matter of his first theoretical work, his doctoral dissertation On the
Difference Between the Democritean and Epicurean Philosophy of Nature. Although
a detailed analysis of the work is beyond the confines of the present book,
several aspects of it are worth re-examination. Marx is drawn to Epicurus
because he ‘applauds sensuous existence’ while highlighting the idea of free-
dom in his theory of declination of the atom. Whereas Democritus’s theory,
in which atoms fall in straight lines, stresses predictability and determinism,
Epicurus, who focuses on the swerving of the atom from straight lines, empha-
sises chance and free will. Marx sees Democritus as ‘throw[ing] himself into
the arms of positive knowledge’ whereas Epicurus has philosophy ‘serve free-
dom itself’.10 He singles out Seneca’s summation of Epicurus: ‘It is wrong to
live under necessity; but no man is constrained to live under necessityâ•›.â•›.â•›.â•›On
all sides lie many short and simple paths to freedom’.11
â•‡ 7.â•‡ Marx 1975d, p. 28.

â•‡ 8.â•‡ Marx 1975a, p. 8.
â•‡ 9.â•‡ By ‘separate’ I do not mean to suggest that they are separate in Marx’s under-
standing, but that there is no logical reason that commitment to one should necessarily
involve commitment to the other.
10.â•‡ Marx 1975d, pp. 40, 41.
11.â•‡ Marx 1975d, p. 82. The phrase is from Seneca’s Ad Lucilium epistolae. See Inwood
and Gerson 1988, p. 68, where the passage is rendered more elegantly as: ‘It is bad
to live under necessity, but there is no necessity to live with necessity. Everywhere
the paths to freedom are open’.
40 • Chapter One
What is perhaps more telling is Marx’s critique of Epicurus. Marx contends

that, while Epicurus strives to emphasise sensuous reality and freedom, ‘the
concept of the atom and sensuous perception face each other as enemies’.12
The declination of the atom is posed as an abstraction from determinant being:
‘The atom abstracts from the opposing being and withdraws itself from it’.13
His atomic theory posits the ideal side, ‘according to which all relation to
something else is negated and motion is established as self-determination’.14
Epicurus’s concept of freedom is that of abstract individuality: ‘abstract individ-
uality is freedom from being, not freedom in being. It cannot shine in the light
of beingâ•›.â•›.â•›.â•›Epicurus grasps the contradiction at its highest peak and objecti-
fies it’.15
Marx considers Epicurus’s position an advance over that of Democritus,
who fails to posit the ‘ideal side’ – the principle of freedom. Yet Epicurus ‘objec-
tifies’ a kind of dualism, in that freedom becomes defined only negatively, as
absence of pain and undue stress [ataraxy]. Whereas Democritus submerges
subject into substance, Epicurus detaches subject from substance. Epicurus
‘has carried atomistics to its final conclusion, which is its dissolution and con-
scious opposition to the universal’.16
Although Marx does not always make this explicit in the text of the
dissertation,17 he is clearly exploring the aporiae of post-Aristotelian Greek
philosophy, with an eye to more contemporary realities. As one important
study of Marx’s dissertation put it,
The atom is ‘the full’ as opposed to ‘the empty’: it is matter. It is subject to
‘dependent motion,’ to falling down. But at the same time as an absolute unit
the atom is free and independent. In emphasizing the distinction, Marx had
in mind the contrast between material necessity and formal civic liberty, or,
in the language of the Young Hegelians, between ‘bourgeois society’ and ‘the
political state’. Figuratively speaking, the atom as an aspect of materiality
is nothing but a bourgeois; as an absolute form of existence it is a citizen of
the French Revolution. Epicurus had emphasized the principle of atomicity,
that is, independence and hence individual freedom; but the contradictions
of this principle were obvious even in this ‘atomistic science’.18
12.â•‡ Marx 1975d, p. 39.

13.â•‡ Marx 1975d, p. 51.
14.â•‡ Marx 1975d, p. 53.
15.â•‡ Marx 1975d, p. 62.
16.â•‡ Marx 1975d, p. 73.
17.â•‡ Marx does make it explicit that his study of Democritus and Epicurus is driven
by his concern with the fate of philosophy in the aftermath of Hegel in his ‘Notebooks
on Epicurean Philosophy’.
18.â•‡ Lifshitz 1973, pp. 23–4.
As Marx sees it, the central problem with Epicurus is that his philosophy
mirrors the contradictions of the modern world insofar as freedom and self-
determination are posited at the expense of maintaining a substantial con-
nection with the material world. The idea of freedom and sensuous reality
confront each other as mortal enemies. Post-Aristotelian Greek philosophy
therefore typifies the pitfall that Marx had earlier indicated that he sought
to extricate himself from: the separation of ideality and reality.
In sum, just as stoicism, scepticism, and Epicureanism constituted a regres-
sion from the ‘acme’ of philosophy reached with Aristotle, so post-Hegelian
philosophy constitutes a subjectivist regression from the Hegelian synthesis.19
Marx is exploring this as part of envisaging a reversal of such regression: ‘The
modern rational outlook on nature must first raise itself to the point from
which ancient Ionian philosophy, in principle at least, begins – the point of
seeing the divine, the Idea, embodied in nature’.20
Marx sees this breakdown of Hegelianism as inevitable, since the unity of
reason and reality proclaimed by his philosophy now confronts a new set of
realities that it cannot account for. Reason and reality oppose each other as
‘two worlds’, ‘one edge turned against the world, the other against philoso-
phy itself’. ‘The party of the concept’, which turns against reality, battles it out
with ‘the party of reality’, which turns against philosophy.21 Both sides ‘place
themselves behind a philosophical giant of the past’ – but, Marx notes, ‘the ass
is soon detected under the lion’s skin’.22
Marx is, of course, far from reconciled to this situation. He seeks a new
beginning to overcome the diremption of reason and reality – although he
is still feeling his way as to how to go about it. He recalls how ‘Themisto-
cles, when Athens was threatened with destruction, tried to persuade the
Athenians to abandon the city entirely and found a new Athens at sea, in
another element’.23 He has not yet discovered what that new ‘element’ might
be. Yet he sees the path forwards in ’turning’ philosophy towards the material
world – in a way that would not represent its abandonment but rather its
19.â•‡ As Marx puts it in his ‘Notebooks on Epicurean Philosophy’, ‘The world con-
fronting a philosophy total in itself is therefore a world torn apart. This philosophy’s
activity also appears torn apart and contradictory; its objective universality is turned
back into the subjective forms of individual consciousness in which it has life’. See
Marx 1975c, p. 491.
20.â•‡ Marx 1975c, pp. 423–4.
21.â•‡ Marx 1975d, p. 86.
22.â•‡ Marx adds, ‘Thus we obtain hair-, nail-, toe-, excrement-philosophers and
others, who have to represent an even worse function in the mystical world man of
Swedenborg’. See Marx 1975d, p. 87.
23.â•‡ Marx 1975c, p. 492.
42 • Chapter One
realisation.24 In noting ‘there are moments when philosophy turns its eyes to
the external world’,25 he adds: ‘But the practice of philosophy is itself theoreti-
cal. It is the critique that measures the individual existence by the essence, the
particular reality by the idea’.26
As we shall demonstrate, Marx’s effort to discern the idea of freedom ‘in
reality itself’ is a theme that will govern all of his subsequent work, and it has
a direct bearing on his understanding of how to posit an alternative to capital-
ist value-production. Although that can be demonstrated only through the
course of exploring his later work, there is another concept in his dissertation
that becomes especially important for understanding his subsequent develop-
ment. This concept is inversion.
A great deal of Marx’s criticism of both capitalism and speculative philoso-
phy will centre on the notion of the inversion of subject and predicate, in
which the products as well as the actions of people take on the form of an
autonomous power that determine and constrain the will of the subjects that
engender them. Although many commentators assume that Marx drew the
concept of inversion from Feuerbach’s critique of religion,27 Marx’s use of the
concept actually predates Feuerbach’s Essence of Christianity, in which the con-
cept of inversion takes on considerable importance.28 Marx first utilises the
concept of inversion in his dissertation, in the course of a critique of Plutarch’s
Colotes. Marx takes issue with Plutarch for writing, ‘so that of every quality we
can truly say, “It no more is than is not”; for to those affected in a certain way
the thing is, but to those not so affected it is not’. Marx notes that in doing so
Plutarch ‘speaks of a fixed being or non-being as a predicate’. However, ‘the
being of the sensuous’ is not a predicate; it is a subject. Marx concludes, ‘Ordi-
nary thinking always has ready abstract predicates which it separates from
the subject. All philosophers have made the predicates into subjects’.29
Marx also discusses inversion in criticising those who adhere to ‘the party
of reality’ – that is, those who turn away from philosophy in light of the ‘dual-
ity of self-consciousness’ that characterises the contemporary world. Despite
24.â•‡ Marx’s position on this issue represents a reversal of Plato’s standpoint, which
centres on a ‘turning’ from the material world to the ideal world of the Forms. See
Plato 1961a, pp. 750–1 [518c4–518d1].
25.â•‡ Marx 1975c, p. 491.
26.â•‡ Marx 1975d, p. 85.
27.â•‡ This claim is made, among many others, by Arthur 1986.
28.â•‡ Feuerbach’s Essence of Christianity was published in 1841, shortly after Marx
finished his dissertation. Marx was aware of Feuerbach’s work from as early as 1837
and he made use of his Geschichte der neuern Philosophie in his dissertation. However,
the concept of inversion – also known as ‘transformative criticism’ – does not figure
in this early work of Feuerbach.
29.â•‡ Marx 1975c, p. 458.
the one-sidedness of the ‘party of the concept’, it nevertheless ‘makes real

progress’ since it takes responsibility for developing ideas. The ‘party of real-
ity’, in contrast, makes no progress because it imputes its ideas to ‘reality’,
instead of taking responsibility for developing them. Marx writes that for this
party ‘the inversion, we may well say the madness, appears as such’.30 Marx
is making a pun out of the fact that Verkehrtheit [inversion] is often identified
with Verrücktheit [madness]. An inverted world is indeed a mad world, insofar
as the subject becomes the predicate and the predicate becomes the subject.31
This is not in any way to suggest that the critique of an inversion of subject
and predicate is original to Marx, since it has a long trajectory in the history
of philosophy.32 It is to suggest, however, that Marx utilised this concept from
very early on – and not simply on the basis of such figures as Feuerbach.
The critique of subject-predicate inversion is one of the major normative prin-
ciples that Marx will bring to bear on his understanding of both philosophy
and reality as he increasingly turns his attention to ‘material matters’ in the
period following the completion of his dissertation.
Marx’s critique of politics and philosophy, 1842–3

Marx turned to ‘material matters’ following the completion of his disserta-
tion by directly engaging in active politics, becoming a radical journalist.
The choice was not completely of his own making. March 1842 represented a
critical turning point in Marx’s life because the increasingly conservative turn
in the German (and especially Prussian) political scene closed off any hope
of an academic career. In that month, young-Hegelian associates of Marx
such as Bruno Bauer were fired from their positions in the universities; new
censorship-restrictions were imposed; and Friedrich Wilhelm II of Prussia
30.â•‡ Marx 1975d, p. 86.

31.â•‡ Marx will often make much of the correspondence between ‘inversion’ and
‘madness’. See Backhaus 1992, pp. 60–1: ‘Marx here intentionally makes use of the
ambiguity of this word which is innate to the German language alone. Thus, on the
one hand, money is a ‘deranged [verrückte] form’ in the sense that it is the ‘most non-
sensical, most unintelligible form,’ that is, it is ‘pure madness [reine Verrücktheit].’
32.â•‡ The critique of subject-predicate inversion – also known as the reversal of
ontological priority – goes back at least as far as Aristotle’s criticism of Plato’s theory
of Forms. Aristotle takes issue with Plato for posing particulars as the dependent
entities and the Forms as the independent entities. Aristotle argues, in contrast, that
particulars are ontologically prior. See Posterior Analytics: ‘Things are prior and more
familiar in two ways; for it is not the same to be prior by nature and prior in relation
to us, nor to be more familiar and more familiar to us. I call prior and more familiar
in relation to us what is nearer to perception, prior and familiar simpliciter what is
furthest away’. See Aristotle 1984, pp. 115–16 [71b34–72a6].
44 • Chapter One
made it clear that he would rule in the name of absolutism. The liberals’
response to these events was a great disappointment to Marx and his asso-
ciates, since they essentially capitulated to Friedrich Wilhelm II without a
fight. Propelled by the philosophical problematic formulated in his doctoral
dissertation, as well as by the actual social conditions, Marx threw himself
into an intense engagement with political realities.
Marx’s main political concerns in 1842–3 centred on a virulent defence of
freedom of the press, a critique of religion, and an opposition to social inequal-
ity. He takes issue with the ‘shallow, superficial rationalism’33 of the censor,
calling it a ‘bureaucracy of intelligence’.34 He opposes any form of press-
censorship on the grounds that a free press is ‘the spiritual mirror in which a
people can see itself, and self-examination is the first condition of wisdom’.35
He makes a critique of religion on the grounds that ‘Morality is based on the
autonomy of the human mind, religion on its heteronomy’.36 Although Marx
had earlier expressed hostility to religion in his dissertation,37 his objection to
linking religion with politics now became much more pronounced: ‘Just as
you do not ask the physician whether he is a believer, you have no reason to
ask the politician either’.38 He opposes social inequality – though this is not
yet his main concern – by taking issue with viewing ‘freedom as merely an
individual property of certain persons and social estates’.39
These political positions are underpinned by a thick set of normative or
even ontological considerations. Marx does not oppose press-censorship on
pragmatic or utilitarian grounds – for instance, by suggesting that it is not
effective, or that it violates the greater good of the greater number. He con-
tends that press-censorship is wrong because ‘Freedom of the will is inherent
in human nature’.40 Since ‘we must take the essence of the inner ideas as the
measure to evaluate the existence of things’, it follows that ‘from the stand-
point of the idea, it is self-evident that freedom of the press has a justification
quite different from that of censorship because it is itself an embodiment of
the idea, an embodiment of freedom, a positive good’.41 He develops this by
33.â•‡ Marx 1975e, p. 117.

34.â•‡ Marx 1975e, p. 126.
35.â•‡ Marx 1975f, p. 165.
36.â•‡ Marx 1975e, p. 119.
37.â•‡ In discussing the various proofs of God’s existence in the dissertation, he argued
that ‘such proofs are proofs of the existence of essential human self-consciousness, logical
explanations for itâ•›.â•›.â•›.â•›Taken in this sense all proofs of the existence of God are proofs
of his non-existence’. See Marx 1975d, pp. 104–5.
38.â•‡ Marx 1975g, p. 201.
39.â•‡ Marx 1975f, p. 151.
40.â•‡ Marx 1975f, p. 137.
41.â•‡ Marx 1975f, p. 154.
arguing that ‘no man combats freedom; at most he combats the freedom of
others’.42 Since to be free defines our nature as human-beings, not even the
censor opposes freedom: instead, he proclaims his freedom in acting as one.
The censor affirms freedom as a particular privilege, instead of as a univer-
sal right. This distinction between particular and universal interests will later
come to play a central role in Marx’s critique of capitalism.
The normative stance adopted by Marx in his early writings is that free-
dom is an ontological characteristic of human-beings, as against something
that ought to exist. He asks, ‘Is there no universal human nature, as there is a
universal nature of plants and stars? Philosophy asks what is true, not what is
held to be true. It asks what is true for all mankind, not what is true for some
people. Its metaphysical truths do not recognise the boundaries of political
geography’.43
It is therefore not surprising that Marx returns – within these political
writings – to the central theme of his doctoral dissertation: the relation between
ideality and reality. The ideality posited by Marx is that human-beings are
inherently free beings. In these early political writings, he is trying to ‘measure’
political realities by the ideality that resides within them. He therefore writes,
Philosophy does not exist outside the world any more than the brain exists
outside man because it is not situated in the stomachâ•›.â•›.â•›.â•›Since every true
philosophy is the intellectual quintessence of its time, the time must come
when philosophy not only internally by its content, but also externally
through its form, comes into contact and interaction with the real world
of its dayâ•›.â•›.â•›.â•›philosophy has become worldly and the world has become
philosophicalâ•›.â•›.â•›.44
This understanding of the relation of philosophy and reality also underpins

Marx’s conception of law. Marx affirms the importance of laws and legal
statutes on the grounds that they serve as the ‘positive, clear, universal norms
in which freedom has acquired an impersonal, theoretical existence indepen-
dent of the arbitrariness of the individual. A statutebook is a people’s bible
of freedom’.45 However, legal statutes are adequate to their concept only
insofar as they correspond to ‘the natural laws of [humanity’s] own reason’.46
He adopts an attitude to the law and political actuality that is largely drawn
from natural-law theory; indeed, Marx readily cites such thinkers as Hobbes,
42.â•‡ Marx 1975f, p. 155.

43.â•‡ Marx 1975g, pp. 191–2.
44.â•‡ Marx 1975g, p. 195.
45.â•‡ Marx 1975f, p. 162.
46.â•‡ Marx 1975g, p. 202.
46 • Chapter One
Spinoza, Grotius and Rousseau in discussing how natural laws are rationally
‘deduced’. He writes, ‘The legal nature of things cannot be regulated accord-
ing to the law; on the contrary, the law must be regulated according to the
legal nature of things’.47
This conception in turn serves as Marx’s standpoint for criticising the
elevation of particular over universal interests – a theme that will become
more pronounced in his later work. As early as his first articles against press-
censorship, Marx took issue with those who defend freedom of the press on
the grounds of freedom of commerce – even though he had not turned his
attention to economic issues. He argues that ‘freedom of trade’ is a particular
freedom that must not be used to measure other freedoms, since ‘every par-
ticular sphere of freedom is the freedom of a particular sphere, just as every
particular mode of life is the mode of life of a particular nature’.48 The eleva-
tion of the private over the general strikes Marx as unacceptable, because it
disturbs the ‘natural’ ability of human-beings as a whole to express their aspi-
rations for free development: ‘Interest by its very nature is blind, immoder-
ate, one sided; in short, it is lawless natural instinct, and can lawlessness lay
down laws? Private interest is no more made capable of legislating by being
installed on the throne of the legislator than a mute is made capable of speech
by being given an enormously long speaking-trumpet’.49
It is important to note that, as of the start of 1843, Marx had neither turned
to a study of political economy nor had he broken from capitalism. His first
mention of ‘communism’ appears in an essay of October 1842, but he men-
tions it only to dismiss it.50 He appears to have studied Fourier, Leroux, Con-
sidérant, and Proudhon by early 1843, but he takes only passing note of their
criticisms of capitalism. Although he attacks ‘pseudo-liberalism’ on several
occasions,51 he remains a radical democrat. It is not until late 1843 – when Marx
makes direct contact with French socialists and members of secret societies of
German communists – that he breaks decisively with capitalist society.
That Marx remains within the parameters of a radical but not anti-capitalist
critique of politics in 1842–3 has important ramifications for his effort to turn
philosophy to ‘material matters’. Although he is still seeking to overcome the
philosophical dualities criticised in his doctoral dissertation, he has not yet
found the ‘new element’ upon which to do so. Despite feelings of sympathy
for those of the ‘poorest estates’, he does not accord them any special role in
47.â•‡ Marx 1975i, p. 227.

48.â•‡ Marx 1975f, p. 173.
49.â•‡ Marx 1975i, p. 261.
50.â•‡ See Marx 1975h, pp. 215–21.
51.â•‡ See Marx 1975d, p. 110.
transforming society, nor does he indicate how political conditions can actu-
ally be changed. His effort to connect ideality and reality therefore suffers
from a tendency to abstractness, as when he writes: ‘In a true state there is no
landed property, no industry, no material thing, which as a crude element of
this kind could make a bargain with the stateâ•›.â•›.â•›.â•›The state pervades the whole
of nature with spiritual nerves’.52 By ‘true state’, of course, Marx means one in
conformity with the idea of freedom. However, since he has not yet discov-
ered a material force that can realise this idea, he dismisses ‘material’ entities
such as things and industry as ‘crude’. Marx’s political-philosophical project
therefore remains quite incomplete as of this point.
Although it is unclear whether Marx was fully aware of these limitations,
in the spring of 1843 he decided to deepen his understanding of the problems
associated with political reality as well as philosophy, by engaging in both
further studies of modern politics53 and a critical commentary on Hegel’s Phi-
losophy of Right. The latter should not be viewed as a departure from his earlier
political concerns. Instead, he turns to the Philosophy of Right because it rep-
resents the most comprehensive philosophical analysis of the political realities
that he began to analyse in 1842–3.54
Marx’s ‘Contribution to the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right’ is one
of his most extensive treatments of Hegel and has become the subject of a
considerable body of scholarly work.55 My aim here is not to engage in a
detailed analysis of the Critique, nor is it to assess the merits or demerits of
Marx’s interpretation of Hegel. My aim is rather to draw out the central ideas
of Marx’s Critique that help disclose the normative principles that he will sub-
sequently employ in his criticism of capitalism as well as in his elaboration of
a possible alternative to it.
Marx’s critique of the Philosophy of Right centres on Hegel’s view of the
relation of civil society and the state. Marx credits Hegel with having sharply
52.â•‡ Marx 1975j, p. 306.

53.â•‡ Many of Marx’s political studies in early and mid-1843 can be found in his
‘Kreuznach Notebooks’, in which an examination of the French Revolution of 1789 and
the history of modern European politics play a central part. See Marx 1981d, pp. 9–60.
In this period, Marx also carefully studied such thinkers as Rousseau, Montesquieu,
Chateaubriand, Ranke, and Machiavelli.
54.â•‡ Leopold claims that Marx’s 1843 Critique represents a shift in his concerns in
that it reflects a growing interest in the modern state. However, since he makes no
effort to analyse the political writings that precede the Critique, his claim remains to
be substantiated. The ensuing analysis will contend that Marx’s critique of the Phi-
losophy of Right, while marking an important development in his thought, represented
a continuation and indeed culmination of the concerns that characterised his writings
of 1842–3.
55.â•‡ See especially Avineri 1969, Cohen 1989, Dupré 1966, and Mészáros 1970.
48 • Chapter One
differentiated them – something absent in the writings of Hobbes, Locke, or

Rousseau. At one and the same time, Marx makes a critique of Hegel for invert-
ing the relation between civil society and the state. Whereas civil society, in
Marx’s view, governs the formation of the state, Hegel makes the state govern
the formation of civil society. Hegel posits the state as an ‘external necessity’
that is above civil society – even though the ‘abstract’ character of the private
sphere of civil society is responsible for the ‘abstract’ character of the modern
state. Marx is not satisfied with simply criticising Hegel for presenting civil
society as the expression of the state, instead of the state as an expression of
civil society. He asks why Hegel does so. The answer, Marx contends, is that
Hegel posits the idea as the subject, instead of as the predicate of the ‘real
subject’ – living men and women. He writes, ‘The idea is made the subject,
and the actual relation of family and civil society to the state is conceived as
its imaginary activity’.56
In Hegel, Marx contends, everything becomes a mere ‘attribute of the idea,
a result, a product of the idea’. And since the idea is made the subject, ‘the
real subjects, namely civil society, familyâ•›.â•›.â•›.â•›become unreal objective elements
of the idea with a changed significance’.57 It therefore follows that in Hegel ‘it
is always on the side of the predicateâ•›.â•›.â•›.â•›that development takes place’.58 Marx
writes,
Hegel transforms the predicates, the objects, into independent entities, but
divorced from their actual independence, their subject. Subsequently the
actual subject appears as a result, whereas one must start from the actual
subject and look at its objectificationâ•›.â•›.â•›.â•›the real subject appears as something
else, as an element of the mystical substance.59
Marx sees a number of problems with Hegel’s inversion of subject and

predicate when it comes to the relation of civil society and the state. First, it
makes the state the active agent and civil society the passive object. Second,
although Hegel treats the state as an ‘organism’ (which Marx sees a ‘great
advance’)60 he fails to explain exactly how the state is the organic expression of
the idea. Third, since the state is presented as the expression of the idea, Hegel
adopts an uncritical attitude towards the state. The state necessarily becomes
viewed uncritically, if it is assumed ahead-of-time that it is an instantiation
56.â•‡ Marx 1975k, p. 8.

57.â•‡ Ibid.
58.â•‡ Marx 1975k, p. 11. Marx means here, of course, the predicate as Marx would
define it – the idea or the state. Hegel himself poses these as the subject, which is
why Marx objects to the ‘inversion’.
59.â•‡ Marx 1975k, p. 23.
60.â•‡ Marx 1975k, p. 11.
of the self-determining idea. Fourth, in presenting the state as the subject

and civil society as the predicate, Hegel fails to explain what mediates their
inter-relation. Hegel at times presents forms of political representation as the
mediation between civil society and the state, while at other times he identifies
such forms with the state.
Although the bulk of Marx’s Critique focuses on his disagreements with
the Philosophy of Right, it soon becomes clear that Marx does not just object to
Hegel’s ideas. He objects to the way in which the relation between subject and
predicate becomes inverted in real life – a situation, as noted earlier, that Marx
finds akin to madness. Although civil society, in Marx’s view, is the active
principle that brings the modern state into being, the latter becomes a ‘person
apart’ that dominates, controls, and restricts civil society. Nor does such real
inversion stop here. The law is a result and manifestation of human activ-
ity; yet, over time, it takes on a life of its own and treats the actual subject,
human-beings, as its object. The same is true of bureaucracy: a product of sub-
jective human interaction becomes ‘a circle from which no one can escape’ –
it becomes ‘the imaginary state alongside the real state’.61 This is also true
of political forms of representation: the legislators present themselves as the
subjects who make the law, when in fact ‘the legislature does not make the
law; it only discovers and formulates it’.62 The critique of inversion extends
to Marx’s view of civil society. Although Marx views civil society as logi-
cally prior to the state, he subjects it to critical examination: ‘Present day civil
society is the realised principle of individualism; the individual existence is the
final goal: activity, work, content are mere meansâ•›.â•›.â•›.â•›Instead of the individual
function being a function of society, it turns, on the contrary, the individual
function into a society for itself’.63 For Marx, civil society also becomes a ‘per-
son apart’ insofar as it is a product of humanity’s social, communal being – and
yet the latter is prevented from being realised because of civil society’s foster-
ing of individual egoism and self-interest. Marx may consider civil society the
subject of modern society, but it is an abstract subject in that it represents the
separation or alienation of humanity from its communal essence. As a result,
its product, the state, must necessarily assume an abstract form as well. As
he puts it, ‘In modern times the idea of the state could not appear except in
61.â•‡ Marx 1975k, pp. 46–7.

62.â•‡ Marx 1975k, p. 58. This statement indicates that Marx has not moved away
from his attachment to natural-law theory at the time he composes his critique of
the Philosophy of Right.
63.â•‡ Marx 1975k, p. 81.
50 • Chapter One
the abstraction of the “merely political state” or the abstraction of civil society
from itself’.64
Critical as Marx is of Hegel, it would be wrong to conclude that Marx sees
him as failing to grasp the realities of the modern era. Rather, Marx’s view is
that Hegel captures the realities of the modern era all too well. Hegel expresses in
thought the inverted reality of the social relations of modernity. By identify-
ing the state with the idea – with an abstraction – Hegel adequately conveys the
abstract (or separate)65 nature of the state. Hegel creates a veritable monument
to present-day reality in the form of a philosophical system. His philosophy
thereby does a tremendous service insofar as it helps bring to consciousness
the realities of the world of which it is the expression.
Marx writes, ‘Hegel is not to be blamed for depicting the nature of the mod-
ern state as it is, but for presenting that which is as the nature of the state’.66
He adds, ‘Hegel has often been attacked for his exposition of morality. He has
done no more than expound the morality of the modern state and modern
civil law’. Marx refers to this as Hegel’s ‘great merit’.67 Marx actually praises
Hegel on many occasions in the Critique.68
What Marx’s Critique does not do is accuse Hegel of being an ‘idealist’,
instead of a ‘materialist’. Although many commentators have presumed that
Marx attacks Hegel for ‘inverting’ the ideal and the real in privileging the for-
mer at the expense of the latter, the criticism never appears once in the 1843
Critique.69 Marx does not accuse Hegel of neglecting reality, nor does he coun-
64.â•‡ Marx 1975k, p. 113.

65.â•‡ The modern state, for Marx, is ‘abstract’ insofar as it is separate and independent
from the social relations that engender it. It hovers over civil society even though it is
its product. The view of the state as abstract has a long lineage in both philosophy
and literature. See Paz 1974, p. 513:
I speak of towers, bridges, tunnels, hangers, wonders, and disasters, / the abstract
state and its concrete police, the schoolteachers, jailers, preachers, / the shops that
have everything, where they spend everything, and it all turns to smokeâ•›.â•›.â•›.
66.â•‡ Marx 1975k, p. 63.
67.â•‡ Marx 1975k, p. 108.
68.â•‡ Despite claims to the contrary by numerous writers, Marx does not accuse Hegel
of being an apologist for the existing Prussian state. Although it is a commonplace in
much of the secondary literature on Marx to claim that he accused Hegel’s Philosophy
of Right of being an apology for Prussian absolutism, no such claim on Marx’s part
appears in any of his writings. Marx criticised Hegel for accommodating to existing
reality because he seeks a philosophical justification for the relation of civil society
and the state; but he does not accuse Hegel of justifying the specific political practices
of the Prussian government. It was not Hegel, but the late Schelling, whom Marx
considered an apologist for Prussian absolutism: ‘Schelling’s philosophy is Prussian
policy sub specie philosophiae’. See Marx 1975n, p. 350.
69.â•‡ Sidney Hook entitles his discussion of the 1843 Critique in From Hegel to Marx:
Studies in the Intellectual Development of Marl Marx as ‘Systematic Philosophical Ide-
alism versus Scientific Materialism’ and states, ‘As contrasted with Hegel, Marx’s
terpose idealism to materialism. Instead, he writes that ‘abstract spiritualism

is abstract materialism; abstract materialism is the abstract spiritualism of matter’.70
Marx does not criticise Hegel for treating reality abstractly; he criticises him
for treating the subject abstractly – that is, as a mere embodiment of predi-
cates of consciousness. The latter defect enables Hegel to provide an adequate
description of the actual (abstract) political realities of modern society.
While inversion is a major theme of Marx’s 1843 Critique, it is not the only
one. Marx also makes a critique of modern society for treating ‘activity, work,
content’ as mere means to an end, instead of as ends in themselves. As far
back as his 1842 writings on freedom of the press, Marx wrote, ‘An end which
requires unjustified means is no justified end’.71 He added, ‘The writer does
not look on his work as a means. It is an end in itself; it is so little a means for
him himself that, if need be, he sacrifices his existence for its existence’.72 This
echo of the second formulation of Kant’s categorical imperative is no accident:
Marx explicitly refers to the principle on numerous occasions.73 The principle
becomes integral to his ‘On the Jewish Question’, written shortly after the
Critique. Marx refers to ‘life in civil society, in which he acts as a private indi-
vidual, regards men as a means, degrades himself into a means, and becomes
a plaything of alien powers’.74 In the modern world, ‘political life declares
itself to be a mere means, whose purpose is the life of civil society’.75 On this
philosophy of history is at once realistic and dynamic, empirical yet hostile to the
belief that ‘social facts’ exist ready made in rerum natura.’ See Hook 1968, p. 41. This
dubious counterposition of Marx’s ‘realism’ to Hegel’s lack of realism characterises
many traditional interpretations of Marx up to the present moment.
70.â•‡ Marx 1975k, p. 88.
71.â•‡ Marx 1975f, p. 164.
72.â•‡ Marx 1975f, p. 175.
73.â•‡ Marx’s first explicit reference to the categorical imperative appears in the
‘Notebooks on Epicurean Philosophy’. See Marx 1975c, p. 439. That Marx made use
of this concept neither makes him a Kantian nor prevents him from having serious
criticisms of Kant’s position. Almost all of Marx’s references to Kant are to the Second
Critique; his work contained almost no explicit references to the First Critique. The
German Ideology criticises Kant’s emphasis on the goodness of the will by stating that
it reflected the backward state of the material conditions of Germany at the time. See
Marx and Engels 1976a, pp. 193–5. That Marx was highly critical of Kant did not,
however, mean he was not influenced by his idea of treating oneself and others as
ends in themselves. By his own acknowledgement, Marx was a Kantian before he
became a Hegelian. For Kant’s second formulation of the categorical imperative, see
Kant 1996a, p. 80: ‘So act that you use humanity, whether in your own person or in
the person of any other, always at the same time as an end, never merely as means’.
See also Kant 1996b, p. 473: ‘For a human being can never be treated merely as a
means to the purposes of another to be put among the objects of rights to things: his
innate personality protects him from this’.
74.â•‡ Marx 1975o, p. 154.
75.â•‡ Marx 1975o, p. 164.
52 • Chapter One
basis Marx contrasts political emancipation with human emancipation. With

political emancipation, civil society is ‘freed’ from the state, but at the price of
turning political life into a mere means for the satisfaction of private, selfish
interests. Although political emancipation is ‘a big step forward’76 in relation
to the despotic world of medieval absolutism, it produces an ‘upside-down’
world in which ‘the aim appears as the means, while the means appear as
the aim’. Human emancipation, in contrast, transcends the bifurcation of civil
society and the state – it is the not-yet-realised realm in which individuals
treat themselves and their fellow humanity as ends in themselves, never only
as a means.77
What Marx draws from his critique of modern politics and Hegel’s Philoso-
phy of Right is the need to transform the human relations that compel individu-
als to subordinate themselves to products of their own creation. He states this
principle as: ‘All emancipation is a reduction of the human world and relation-
ships to man himself’.78
Given Marx’s sharp critique of modern society in the 1843 Critique and ‘On
the Jewish Question’, it is tempting to ask what he envisages as the alterna-
tive to its ‘abstract’ and inverted conditions. While Marx does not directly
address the question, several points seem to be implied by his analysis. One,
the individualistic and atomised nature of civil society needs to be changed so
as to accord with the communal nature of humanity. Two, the separation of
the state from the citizenry must be overcome – not only through the develop-
ment of representative institutions but also by the transformation of egotisti-
cal civil society. Three, political and social power should not be monopolised
by particular interests at the expense of the general interests of the mass of
citizenry, as is the case with modern bureaucracy. Four, a genuine ‘mediation’
between a transformed civil society and the state is needed – as against the
false forms of mediation suggested by Hegel’s limited discussion of represen-
tative institutions.
Other interpretations of the implications of Marx’s Critique for envisaging
an alternative are possible, and the above is by no means an exhaustive list.79
76.â•‡ Marx 1975o, p. 155.

77.â•‡ Although Marx never uses, as far as I am aware, Kant’s formulation ‘the king-
dom of ends’, he does write: ‘Hence law withdraws into the background in the face
of man’s life as a life of freedom’. See Marx 1975f, p. 162.
78.â•‡ Marx 1875o, p. 168. Emphases are in the original. It is left unclear as of this
point in Marx’s writings whether human emancipation would require the abolition of
the state per se as well as the abolition of the separation of the state from civil soci-
ety. As I will attempt to show, in his later writings Marx does explicitly call for the
abolition of the state.
79.â•‡ See Leopold 2007, pp. 248–51, for an alternative list of possibilities. Although I
concur with many of Leopold’s points, he underemphasises the extent to which Marx’s
1843 Critique suggests the need for a radical transformation of civil society.
However, we need to be especially cautious about drawing inferences about

Marx’s view of an alternative from the 1843 Critique. This is not only because
it does not explicitly address alternatives. Most of all, it is because it was com-
posed prior to Marx’s full break with capitalism. The Critique never so much as
mentions either the proletariat or socialism and communism.
Instead, it states, ‘Democracy is the solved riddle of all constitutions’.80 He
will later use a similar phrase in his Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of
1844 – except that he will there refer to communism as the ‘solved riddle’.81 The
Critique also states, ‘Only democracy, therefore, is the true unity of the general
and the particular’.82 Although Marx will remain a firm defender of democ-
racy for the rest of his life, he writes very differently in ‘On the Jewish Ques-
tion’ (written only a few months later) in distinguishing political from human
emancipation. Political democracy, he argues, does not end the separation of
man from man; instead, it elevates the particular over the general. ‘It makes
every man see in other men not the realisation of his own freedom, but the bar-
rier to it’.83 Marx therefore speaks of the need to ‘suppress’ the ‘prerequisite’
of civil society by ‘declaring the revolution to be permanent’.84 By the time of
his 1843–4 essays in the Deutsch-Franzöischer Jahrbücher, Marx realises that a
thoroughgoing social transformation is needed in order for society to become
expressive of humanity’s ‘species-being’ – its capacity for free, conscious, pur-
poseful activity.85
There may be a philosophical basis to the political limitations in the 1843
Critique, in that, in some passages, Marx seems to remain under the spell of
young-Hegelian assumptions – even while trying to become free from them.
At one point, in objecting to Hegel for positing ‘self-knowing and self-will-
ing mind’ as the subject, he says he prefers that ‘actual mind [be] the starting
80.â•‡ Marx 1975k, p. 29.

81.â•‡ In 1844 he writes, ‘Communism is the riddle of history solved, and it knows
itself to be this solution’. See Marx 1975r, pp. 296–7.
82.â•‡ Marx 1975k, p. 30. According to Michael Löwy, ‘The word “democracy” had
for Marx a specific meaning: abolition of the separation between the social and the
political, the universal and the particular’. This does not change the fact that there is
a significant difference between Marx’s 1843 Critique and his Economic and Philosophi-
cal Manuscripts of 1844, in that by the time of the latter he spoke in terms of com-
munism, and not only democracy, as the expression of this abolition. Löwy himself
contends that in the 1843 Critique Marx remains ‘ideologically confused’. See Löwy
2005, pp. 41–5.
83.â•‡ Marx 1975o, p. 163.
84.â•‡ Marx 1975o, p. 156.
85.â•‡ Although the concept of ‘species-being’ is central to the Economic and Philosophi-
cal Manuscripts of 1844, it first makes its appearance in ‘On the Jewish Question’. The
latter essay, as well as his ‘Contribution to the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right.
Introduction’, were written at the end of 1843 and appeared in the Deutsch-Französische
Jahrbücher in early 1844.
54 • Chapter One
point’.86 This seems some ways from his later emphasis on stressing the mate-
rial conditions of society as the starting point.
Despite these limitations, the 1843 Critique marks a crucial moment in Marx’s
evolution, since through his study of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right he has come
to a much richer understanding of the contradictions and defects of modern
political reality. As a result, he now turns to ponder the future, in asking what
kind of society can overcome these defects. He is not at all sure of the answer.
As he writes to Arnold Ruge upon completing the Critique, ‘Not only has a
state of general anarchy set in among the reformers, but everyone will have
to admit to himself that he has no exact idea of what the future ought to be’.87
So how is one to proceed? Marx reiterates his preoccupation with discerning
the ideal from within the real. He writes, ‘Constructing the future and settling
everything for all times is not our concern’. He does not want to ‘dogmatically
anticipate’ the new world. Instead, he wants ‘to find the new world through
criticism of the old one’.88 He says the task is to ‘develop new principles for
the world out of the world’s own principles’. He wants to ‘merely show the
world what it is really fighting for, and consciousness is something that it has
to acquire, even if it does not want to’.89
That Marx is reiterating some of the same concerns expressed in his dis-
sertation, only now mediated by a much richer understanding of the defects
of contemporary politics, is shown by his ‘Contribution to the Critique of
Hegel’s Philosophy of Right. Introduction’.90 The ideal towards which we must
strive, Marx contends, is to unmask and transcend ‘human self-estrange-
ment’ in the ‘unholy forms’ of existing society. This cannot be achieved with-
out a philosophy based on ‘the categorical imperative to overthrow all relations
in which man is a debased, enslaved, forsaken, despicable being’.91 At the
same time, ‘revolutions require a passive element, a material basisâ•›.â•›.â•›.â•›It is not
enough for thought to strive for realization, reality must also strive towards
thought’.92 Marx is clearly reaching for an element within reality that can rea-
lise the ideal – without putting aside the need to philosophically elucidate the
86.â•‡ Marx 1975k, p. 17.

87.â•‡ Marx, 1975m, p. 142.
88.â•‡ Ibid.
89.â•‡ Marx 1975m, p. 144.
90.â•‡ This should not be confused with the 1843 Critique, of which this was intended
to serve as the Introduction. The former was never completed, however, and Marx
published the ‘Introduction’ in the same issue of the Deutsch-Franzöischer Jahrbücher
that contained ‘On the Jewish Question’.
91.â•‡ Marx 1975p, p. 182. Emphasis is by Marx in the original.
92.â•‡ Marx 1975p, p. 183.
ideal. For this reason he takes issue with two ‘parties’ – the ‘practical political
party’, which turns to reality at the expense of philosophy, and the ‘party of
philosophy’, which turns away from reality. Marx is reiterating, on a higher
level, his critique of ‘the party of the concept’ and ‘the party of reality’ that he
took issue with in his dissertation.93
So what is the element within reality that is capable of realising his philo-
sophical ideals? None other than ‘a class of civil society which is not of civil
society, an estate which is the dissolution of all estates, a sphere which has a
universal character by its universal suffering and claims no particular right’ –
the proletariat.94 Hence, ‘as philosophy finds its material weapons in the pro-
letariat, so the proletariat finds its spiritual weapons in philosophy’. With his
discovery of the proletariat as the revolutionary class, Marx has resolved – or
so he thinks – the problematic that preoccupied him for years concerning the
need to overcome the diremption of philosophy and reality. ‘Philosophy can-
not be made a reality without the abolition of the proletariat, and the prole-
tariat cannot be abolished without philosophy being made a reality’.95
It is important to note that Marx’s discovery of the proletariat as the revo-
lutionary class precedes his study of ‘economic matters’, which began later in
1844. His conception of the proletariat was part of an effort to resolve a philo-
sophical problematic.96 Now that he has fully broken from capitalist society,
he will utilise the concepts he had developed in his work of 1842–3 – such as
subject-predicate inversion, treating oneself and others as ends in themselves,
and the need to transform the human relations between individuals – as he
turns to explore the economic conditions of modern existence.
93.â•‡ See Marx 1975d, p. 86.

94.â•‡ Marx 1975p, p. 186. Marx’s wording here closely follows Emmanuel Sieyès’
phrases in discussing the third estate in Qu’est-ce que le tiers état?, published in 1789
on the eve of the French Revolution: ‘What is the third estate? Everything. – What
was it until now in the political respect? Nothing. – What is it striving for? To be
something’.
95.â•‡ Marx 1975p, p. 187.
96.â•‡ This is not to suggest that Marx’s discovery of the proletariat was purely a
product of philosophical reasoning, let alone a ‘literary myth’, as some have argued.
Upon moving to Paris in November 1843, Marx for the first time directly meets with
French workers and groups of German communists, whose membership consisted
overwhelmingly of proletarians. Marx’s ‘discovery’ of the proletariat in the ‘Introduc-
tion’ was affected by those experiences. As he later wrote to Feuerbach, ‘You would
have to attend one of these meetings of the French workers to appreciate the pure
freshness, the nobility which burst forth from these toil-worn men’. See Marx 1975l,
p. 355.
56 • Chapter One
Marx’s critique of economics and philosophy, 1843–4

Marx follows his 1842–3 criticisms of politics and philosophy with a wide-
ranging critique of economics and philosophy, beginning in 1844. He plunges
into an extensive study of economic literature, taking voluminous notes on
Smith, Ricardo, Say, MacCulloch, James Mill, Friedrich List, Frédéric Skarbek
and many others.97 He also makes direct contact with secret societies of self-
proclaimed ‘materialist communists’, in April or May 1844. These groups
were distinguished from the utopian socialists in emphasising the need to
abolish private property in the means of production through a social revolu-
tion. Unlike most of the utopian-socialist groupings, they were largely com-
posed of proletarians.98
As Marx comes to a deeper understanding of the nature of capitalism, he
becomes more specific about what he sees as its problems. Of foremost impor-
tance in this regard are his attitudes towards private property and the market.
In an early writing that has often been overlooked in the critical literature on
Marx – his 1844 ‘Comments on James Mill, Éléments de l’économie politique’ – he
sharply attacks the market, exchange-relations, and money, seeing in them
‘the social act which man’s activity is alienated from itself’.99 He finds com-
merce and trade to be an ‘estranged form of social intercourse’.100 The prob-
lem that he has with commerce is that, ‘the mediating process between men
engaged in exchange is not a social or human process, not human relationship:
it is the abstract relationship of private property to private property, and the
expression of this abstract relationship is value, whose actual existence as value
constitutes money’.101
Exchange represents an object-object relation, in which the subject has little
or no say. Chance and accident rules in relations of exchange, not the deliberate
â•‡ 97.â•‡ See Marx 1981d, pp. 301–591 for his excerpt-notebooks on economics from
1844.
â•‡ 98.â•‡ It is important to note that Marx never joined any utopian tendencies and
groupings, although he did work with the League of the Just, which he joined when it
became the Communist League in 1847. It was founded in 1836. In 1840 other groups
of communists arose, such as the Society of Egalitarian Workers and the Revolution-
ary Communist Society. The membership of these groups was almost exclusively
working-class, though most were artisans and not industrial workers. In light of this
actual history, the claim that the idea of socialism and communism was introduced
to the workers ‘from outside’ by radical intellectuals like Marx – a notion famously
propagated by V.I. Lenin in What Is to Be Done – is especially specious. For more on
this period, see Löwy 2005, pp. 59–85.
â•‡ 99.â•‡ Marx 1975q, p. 212.
100.â•‡ Marx 1975q, p. 217.
101.â•‡ Marx 1975q, pp. 212–13.
acts of human-beings.102 Whereas, in precapitalist societies, people oppress

people, in capitalism things oppress people. ‘What was the domination of per-
son over person is now the general domination of the thing over the person, of
the product over the producer’.103 Marx is measuring market- and exchange-
relations against the normative principle, as he expressed in 1843, that ‘all
emancipation is a reduction of the human world and relationships to man
himself’.
Marx’s objection to exchange-relations and the market is clearly stated.
What is not so clear from the Mill excerpts is why exchange-relations take
on an alienated form. Is it because of the nature of exchange as such? Or is it
because of the social relations that they are the expression of?
Marx provides a possible answer when he writes, ‘The relationship of
exchange being presupposed, labour becomes directly labour to earn a living’.104
The meaning of this phrase is not transparent, since Marx must have known
that exchange-relations long precede the emergence of wage-labour. He men-
tions that, with ‘primitive’ exchange-relations prior to a developed division
of labour, what enters the market is only the labourer’s surplus-product.
Wage-labour cannot become the medium of social reproduction under such a
‘primitive form of alienated private property’. It is only later, when ‘the divi-
sion of labour, the product, the material of private property, acquires for the
individual more and more the significance of an equivalent’ that universalised
market-relations emerge. At that point, ‘[T]he individual, no longer exchanges
only his surplus, and the object of his production can become simply a matter
of indifference to him, so he too no longer exchanges his product for something
directly needed by him. The equivalent now comes into existence as an equiva-
lent in money, which is now the immediate result of labour to gain a living and
the medium of exchange’.105
It therefore appears that it is not exchange as such that is the problem, but
conditions in which exchange becomes depersonalised. No longer is one person
exchanging a surplus-product with another who has his own to exchange.
Now all products, regardless of their material content and the needs that they
may fulfil, are treated as expressions of an abstract equivalent – money. Gen-
eralised commodity-exchange therefore leads to wage-labour. Marx sees this
as an adverse development, since ‘The complete domination of the estranged
102.â•‡ Ibid. Marx makes the same point in his critical excerpt-notes on Ricardo and
Say, written at about the same time. See Marx 1981b, pp. 392–427.
103.â•‡ Marx 1975q, p. 221.
104.â•‡ Marx 1975q, p. 219.
105.â•‡ Marx 1975q, p. 221.
58 • Chapter One
thing over man has become evident in money, which is completely indiffer-
entâ•›.â•›.â•›.â•›to the personality of the property owner’.106
In issuing this criticism, Marx introduces a new concept – alienated labour.
He refers to it as ‘labour to earn a living’. Alienated labour reaches its ‘highest
peak’, he writes, when ‘he who buys the product is not himself a producer, but
gives in exchange what someone else has produced’.107 He does not say much
more about alienated labour at this point, instead returning to the problems
of exchange. It is therefore left unclear as to whether alienated labour produces
alienated exchange-relations or whether it results from generalised commod-
ity-exchange. Marx has not yet clarified the relation between alienated labour
on the one hand and the market and private property on the other.
At the end of the piece he suddenly writes, ‘Let us suppose that we had
carried out production as human beings’. In this way, he ventures for the first
time into a discussion of a postcapitalist society, writing: (1) ‘In my produc-
tion I would have objectified my individuality, its specific character’108 – that is,
alienated labour would no longer exist. ‘I would now enjoy my activity as
well as its products, since the products would express the specific character
of my individuality. (2) In doing so I would have the satisfaction of meeting
another person’s need through the objectification of my activity. (3) I would
have been the mediator between you and the species – and so I would see
the other person not as a hostile competitor but as a necessary complement
to myself. (4) ‘In the individual expression of my life I would have directly
created your expression of your life’ – that is, the separation of private from
general interests would be overcome. ‘Our products would be so many mir-
rors in which we saw reflected our essential nature’ – because ‘my work would
be a free manifestation of life, as would yours.’109
Curiously, it is only in discussing this vision of a new society that Marx
indicates that the limitations of the market and exchange result from alien-
ated labour. However, since the discussion here of alienated labour is very
brief and in the context of a lengthy critique of exchange-relations, it is pos-
sible to read the Mill excerpts as suggesting that his main object of criticism
is the ‘arbitrary’ or ‘irrational’ character of the market.110 How a major part of
the piece is read largely hinges on determining exactly when Marx composed
106.â•‡ Ibid.
107.â•‡ Marx 1975q, pp. 219–20. Marx here clearly identifies wage-labour with alien-
ated labour – a theme that he will further develop in his later work.
108.â•‡ Marx 1975q, p. 227.
109.â•‡ Marx 1975q, p. 228.
110.â•‡ This is how Allan Megill reads the Mill excerpts. I will respond to this
below.
the Mill excerpts. If he did so before writing the Economic and Philosophical
Manuscripts of 1844, it would indicate that there was an evolution of his think-
ing in which the question of alienated labour took on new importance. If he
did so after writing the 1844 Manuscripts, it could indicate that he considered
the critique of market- and exchange-relations as of equal or even greater
importance than alienated labour. Although there is no scholarly consensus
as to the exact dating of the respective manuscripts, it appears from the most
recent research that the Mill excerpts precede the 1844 Manuscripts.111
The Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844 are the most famous
of Marx’s early works. To see how they mark a further development of the
project that he embarked upon from his earliest writings, it is important to
grasp the philosophical underpinning of his critique of political economy as
well as the economic ramifications of his critique of Hegelian philosophy. The
two sides have not always achieved sufficient attention. To take one promi-
nent example, although Hal Draper devotes considerable attention to Marx’s
work of the 1840s in his multi-volume Marx’s Theory of Revolution, he pays
scant attention to the Hegelian inheritance, scornfully dismissing it as some-
thing Marx ‘sloughed off’ as he clarified his new world-view.112 At the other
extreme, Michel Henry provides a close reading of Marx’s debt to Hegel in
Marx: A Philosophy of Human Reality while passing over its implications for
the critique of political economy.113 I will seek to show that Marx’s encounter
with Hegel – as well as the concepts elaborated by him prior to his break with
capitalism – had a direct impact on his understanding of capital as well as his
conception of the alternative to it.
In the 1844 Manuscripts, Marx follows the classical political economists
in defining capital as congealed labour. However, he introduces the impor-
tant additional argument that capital is not the congealment of any kind of
labour. It is congealed abstract or alienated labour. As he writes in the Second
Manuscript, capital is the expression of ‘a special sort of work [which is] indif-
ferent to its content, of complete being-for-self, of abstraction from all other
being’.114 Although Marx has not yet developed his concept of the dual char-
acter of labour – the split between abstract and concrete labour – which will
become so central to Capital (and which he defines as his unique contribution
111.â•‡ See Rojahn 1985, pp. 647–63. He writes, ‘As for the exzertpe from Ricardo’s and
Mill’s books, there is no clear evidence of when exactly they were madeâ•›.â•›.â•›.â•›It is however
beyond doubt that Marx read Mill’s book before writing the Third Manuscript’ of the
1844 Manuscripts. For the shorter version of this argument, see Rojahn 2002, p. 38.
112.â•‡ See Draper 1977, p. 94.
113.â•‡ See Henry 1983.
114.â•‡ Marx 1975r, p. 286.
60 • Chapter One
to the critique of political economy), it is noteworthy that in 1844 he already

defines capital as congealed abstract labour. As he writes in the First Manu-
script, ‘The proletarianâ•›.â•›.â•›.â•›lives purely by labour, and by a one-sided, abstract
labourâ•›.â•›.â•›.â•›What in the evolution of mankind is the meaning of this reduction
of the greater part of mankind to abstract labour?â•›.â•›.â•›.â•›Political economy consid-
ers labour in the abstract as a thing, labour as a commodityâ•›.â•›.â•›.â•›Capital is stored
up labour’.115
The worker is forced to live ‘purely by labour’ in becoming an instrument
of production – a mere appendage to a machine. He writes, ‘The machine
accommodates itself to the weakness of the human being in order to make
the human being into a machine’.116 The workers’ activity is reduced to an
‘abstract mechanical movement’. What makes this development possible is
the separation of labour from the objective conditions of production. By tear-
ing the labourers from their connection to their ‘natural workshop’ of the land,
capitalism denies workers a direct connection to the means of production. The
workers ‘own’ nothing but their capacity to labour117 and are compelled to
sell it to individual property-owners. Private interest prevails over the gen-
eral interest in the form of private ownership of the production-process. As
noted earlier, Marx views the predominance of the former over the latter as a
violation of the communal or social nature of humanity. He therefore aligns
himself with the main demand of the socialist and communist movements of
his time – the abolition of private property.118
However, Marx brings a distinctive perspective to demands to transform
property-relations by arguing that the abolition of private property does not
necessarily lead to the abolition of capital. To liberate the worker, he argues, it
is necessary to go deeper than the property-relation and deal with ‘the direct
relation of the worker and production’.
In doing so, we discover that in the production-process ‘labour itself
becomes an object’.119 Labour, as a subjective activity, becomes thingified,
115.â•‡ Marx 1975r, pp. 241, 244, 247.

116.â•‡ Marx 1975r, p. 308.
117.â•‡ In the 1844 Manuscripts, Marx does not yet distinguish between labour and
labour-power. I will discuss the ramifications of this crucial distinction in the chapter
dealing with Marx’s Capital.
118.â•‡ The identification of communism with the abolition of private property has a
lineage that long predates the modern era. The ‘materialist communists’ first emerged
around 1840 and distinguished between private ownership of goods (which they did
not oppose) and private ownership of the means of production. The ‘materialist com-
munists’ – who included such figures as Dézamy, Pillot, Gray, and Charavay – should
not be confused with the utopian socialists (who included Cabet, Owen, Fourier and
Saint-Simon), some of whom tended not to make this distinction.
119.â•‡ Marx 1975r, p. 272.
reified. It is not hard to notice the separation or alienation of the product from
the producer on the basis of the principles enunciated by the classical-political
economists, since they argued that labour is the source of all value. It stands to
reason, once this premise is accepted, that the workers receive less value in the
forms of wages and benefits than is contained in the value of their products.
However, classical-political economy conceals what Marx considers to be the
more important problem – the separation or alienation of labour from its own
activity. When we directly examine what happens to the worker in the process
of production, we see that his own activity ‘is turned against him, [becomes]
independent of him’.120 Marx is now applying his critique of subject-predicate
inversion to the labour-process. The very activity of the subject becomes the
predicate – a thing apart that dominates and controls the real subject.
Marx also makes a critique of existing society for treating labour as a mere
means to an end, instead of as an end in itself. As he puts it, ‘In the wage of
labour, the labour does not appear as an end in itself but as the servant of
the wage’.121 The products of labour are likewise not treated as ends in them-
selves, but only as means to satisfy egotistical need.
Although Marx begins his criticism by showing that workers are alienated
from the product of their labour, he takes great pains to show that the source of
this problem lies in the alienated character of labour itself. By reducing labour
to a mere means to earn a living in which all joy and satisfaction is banished,
the workers no longer feel at home in their own labour. This necessitates the
existence of an alien-class which extracts forced labour from the worker. Only
then does it become possible for the product of labour to become alienated
from the worker. For this reason, Marx writes, ‘The relationship of the worker
to labour creates the relation of it to the capitalist (or whatever one chooses
to call the master of labour)’.122 He concludes: ‘Private property is thus the
result, the necessary consequence of alienated labour, of the external relation
of the workers to nature and to himselfâ•›.â•›.â•›.â•›though private property appears
to be the reason, the cause of alienated labour, it is rather its consequence,
just as the gods are originally not the cause but the effect of man’s intellectual
confusion’.123
Marx thinks he is onto something important here; he explicitly says it ‘sheds
light on various hitherto unresolved conflicts’.124 The inattentive reader may
pass over the fact that it resolves a conflict with which Marx himself has been
120.â•‡ Marx 1975r, p. 275.

121.â•‡ Marx 1975, p. 280.
122.â•‡ Marx 1975r, p. 279.
123.â•‡ Ibid.
124.â•‡ Marx 1975r, p. 280.
62 • Chapter One
struggling. As we saw from the ‘Comments on James Mill’, Marx initially

focuses his critique of capitalism on the existence of private property and rela-
tions of exchange. For this reason, his first encounter with Proudhon’s work –
which held that ‘property is theft’ – was highly positive. He now takes a very
different view. Classical-political economy, he notes, ‘starts from labour as
the real soul of production’ and yet never directly analyses the relation of the
worker and production. Instead, it ‘gives’ everything to its defence of private
property. However, ‘when one speaks of private property, one thinks of deal-
ing with something external to man’.125 Property is, after all, the product of
human activity. Classical-political economy reverses matters, by presenting
the predicate – property-relations – as the determining factor while ignoring
the alienated nature of the workers’ activity. Marx now realises that Proudhon
fails to break from this inversion. ‘Proudhon has decided in favor of labour
against private property’126 since he opposes private property. However,
he does not recognise that capitalism’s property-relations are themselves a
product of ‘the contradiction of estranged labour with itself’.127 Much like the
classical-political economists, Proudhon is ‘dealing with something external
to man’.
Marx, on the other hand, sees the need to go much further. As noted earlier,
in ‘On the Jewish Question’ Marx wrote, ‘All emancipation is a reduction, of
the human world and relationships to man himself.’128 He reaches this view
through a critique of religion. In contrast to Bruno Bauer and the Hegelian
Left, Marx does not see religion as the cause of secular distress; he rather sees
secular distress as the cause of religion. He proceeds to try to comprehend
the reasons for secular distress. As he comes into contact with socialist and
communist currents and engages in a serious study of political economy in
1844, he sees that the existence of private property is a major reason for such
distress. However, since private property is an objectified product of human
activity, the critique of private property does not satisfy the requirement of
reducing all emancipation to ‘relationships to man himself’. The critique of
private property still deals with what is ‘external to man’. Marx’s normative
principle of human emancipation – which he reiterates in 1844 as ‘man’s rela-
tion to himself only becomes for him objective and actual through his relation
to the other man’129 – drives him to look deeper than the property-relation.
This takes him to his theory of alienated labour. As he puts it, ‘When one
125.â•‡ Marx 1975r, p. 281.

126.â•‡ Marx 1975r, p. 280.
127.â•‡ Marx 1975r, p. 281.
128.â•‡ Marx 1975o, p. 168.
129.â•‡ Marx 1975r, p. 278.
speaks of labour, one is directly dealing with man himself. This new formula-
tion of the question already contains its solution’.130
How does it contain its solution? It follows from the analysis that, while
private property must be abolished – since it separates workers from the con-
ditions of production – that alone does not get to the heart of the problem. The
heart of the problem is abolishing capital itself, by ending the estrangement in
the very activity of labouring. We have reached the conceptual pivot of what Marx
sees as the alternative to capitalism.
Marx comes to this conclusion by proceeding phenomenologically. As noted
earlier, the ‘Comments on James Mill’ begins by taking issue with the most
obvious, phenomenal manifestations of distress in capitalist society: the
inequalities generated by private property and the market. As he deepens
his critique of capitalism on the basis of the normative principles projected in
his early writings, he emphasises the essential determinants responsible for
private property and the market. By the end of the 1844 Manuscripts, he has
reached a self-clarification that was not yet evident in his earlier writings.131
Marx’s process of coming to terms with the alienation of labour is a vivid self-
confirmation of his statement that ‘the transcendence of self-estrangement fol-
lows the same course of self-estrangement’.132
Now that Marx has penetrated into the root of the problem of capitalism,
he becomes more specific about the postcapitalist society he is searching for.
Wages, he writes, are a form of private property, since they are paid to the
worker on the basis of the capitalist’s ownership of the products of labour.
He has shown that private property is not the cause but the consequence of
alienated labour. It follows that equality of wages – as proposed by many
utopian socialists – fails to address the issue of alienated labour. In fact, Marx
writes, ‘the equality of wages, as demanded by Proudhon, only transforms the
relationship of the present-day worker to his labour into the relationship of
all men to labour. Society is then conceived as an abstract capitalist’.133 This is,
in many respects, a remarkable passage, for it anticipates the defects of many
of the social experiments that will be carried out (ironically enough) in Marx’s
name in the twentieth century.
130.â•‡ Marx 1975r, p. 281.

131.â•‡ On these grounds, I differ from Rojahn’s assessment: ‘The comments by which
Marx interrupted his exzertpe from Mill’s Elements surpass in clarity most of the exposi-
tions given in the First, Second, and Third Manuscripts’. See Rojahn 2002, p. 45.
132.â•‡ Marx 1975r, p. 294. In this sense, it is worth keeping in mind the statement
from Marx’s doctoral dissertation that serves as the epigraph of this chapter. What
Marx often presents as knowledge of the outer world can be read as a self-knowledge
that he has obtained from his relation to it.
133.â•‡ Marx 1975r, p. 280.
64 • Chapter One
Two points are worth noting from this. First, wages, like property, are
results of human activity. They are made necessary by the existence of alien-
ated labour. To ignore alienated labour while altering wage- and property-
relations through the elimination of private capitalists does not undermine
the necessity for a ruling class to impose forced labour on the workers. Society
has a whole now becomes the ‘abstract capitalist’. One form of oppression is
ended by instituting an ever-more egregious form of oppression. Second, if
everyone is paid the same wage, labour becomes treated as a uniform abstrac-
tion. Treating labour as an abstraction, however, is precisely the problem with
alienated labour. Proudhon reduces property to ‘labour’: but he has failed to
notice that this is precisely what capitalism does by treating ‘labour’ as a pro-
ducer of value irrespective of the labourer’s actual human characteristics.134 In
the name of ‘liberation’, Proudhon is fulfilling the central mission of capital-
ism – to reduce labouring activity to an undifferentiated sameness by failing
to take issue with the dominance of abstract labour.
Since Marx’s 1844 critique of Proudhon represents the first time that he
has distinguished his understanding of a postcapitalist society from that of a
fellow-socialist, we need to look more closely at the issue. Although it may
not be obvious from a first reading, the concepts that Marx employs in his cri-
tique are largely drawn from Hegel’s dialectic. Marx’s expression that capital
is the expression of ‘a special sort of work [which is] indifferent to its content,
of complete being-for-self, of abstraction from all other being’, indicates that
he is utilising Hegelian categories to describe capital. Capital, as self-expand-
ing value, is ‘indifferent’ to otherness, be it of nature or human sensuousness,
which it seeks to subsume under its self-movement; yet, at the same time,
capital must take on a material, externalised form. Hegel presents a similar
dynamic in discussing ‘being-for-self’ in the Science of Logic:
We say that something is for itself in so far as it transcends otherness,
its connection and community with other, has repelled them and made
abstraction from themâ•›.â•›.â•›.â•›Being for self is the polemical, negative attitude
towards the limiting other, and through this negation of the latter is a
reflectedness-into-self, although along with this return of consciousness
into itself and the ideality of the object, the reality of the object is also still
preserved, in that it is at the same time known as an external existence.135
134.â•‡ See Marx 1975r, p. 291: ‘Under the semblance of recognizing man, the political
economy whose principle is labour rather carries to its logical conclusion the denial
of man.’ Marx will later write that Proudhon makes a critique of political economy
from the standpoint of political economy.
135.â•‡ Hegel 1979a, p. 158.
Marx’s employment of Hegelian categories to delineate the logic of capital

will take on even greater significance in the Grundrisse and Capital. Yet this
does not mean that Hegel was important to Marx only insofar as he helps
reveal the nature of capital. Hegel’s dialectic also had an impact on Marx’s
conception of what is needed to transcend capital.
This is seen especially from his critical appropriation of Hegel’s dialectic
of negativity ‘as the moving and creating principle’ in the 1844 Manuscripts.
In Hegel, all movement proceeds through the power of negativity, the nega-
tion of obstacles to the subject’s self-development. The actual transcendence
of these obstacles is reached not through the negation of their immediate and
external forms of appearance (which Hegel calls first negation), but through
‘the negation of the negation’. In the ‘negation of the negation’, the power of
negativity gets turned back upon the self, upon the internal as well as external
barriers to self-movement. The negation of the negation, or absolute negativ-
ity, posits from itself the positive, the transcendence of alienation. For Hegel,
second negativity ‘is the innermost and most objective moment of life and
spirit, by virtue of which a subject is personal and free’.136 As he wrote in the
Science of Logic, ‘But in all this, care must be taken to distinguish between the
first negation as negation in general, and the second negation, the negation of
the negation: the latter is concrete, absolute negativity, just as the former on
the contrary is only abstract negativity’.137
Marx enters into a direct engagement with Hegel’s concept of negativity in
the final part of the Third Manuscript, the ‘Critique of the Hegelian Dialectic’.
He focuses on the concluding chapter of the Phenomenology of Spirit, ‘Absolute
Knowledge’, as well as the Encyclopedia of Philosophical Sciences. The chapter on
‘Absolute Knowledge’ contains Hegel’s fullest discussion of self-movement
through self-reflected negativity, and Marx believes that he has found within
it the merits as well as demerits of Hegel’s philosophical system as a whole.
The significance that Marx accords the chapter on ‘Absolute Knowledge’ is
indicated by the fact that he devotes himself to a more direct and detailed
investigation of this than any other single chapter of Hegel’s writings.138
In his ‘Critique of the Hegelian Dialectic’, Marx is first of all scathingly
critical of what he finds in Hegel’s chapter on ‘Absolute Knowledge’, which
136.â•‡ Hegel 1979a, p. 830.

137.â•‡ Hegel 1979a, pp. 115–16.
138.â•‡ This is true both of Marx’s early writings on Hegel and his writings and com-
mentaries on Hegel as a whole. Although the 1843 Contribution to the Critique of Hegel’s
Philosophy of Right is lengthier than the 1844 ‘Critique of the Hegelian Dialectic’, Marx
does not provide as detailed an analysis of a specific chapter in the former as he does
for ‘Absolute Knowledge’ in the latter.
66 • Chapter One
represents a summation of the stages of consciousness traversed in the Phe-

nomenology as a whole. He argues that the chapter shows that the structure of
the Phenomenology is fatally flawed because the subject of the dialectical move-
ment is disembodied self-consciousness, instead of living men and women.
Marx writes, ‘For Hegel the human being – man – equals self-consciousness’.139
This dehumanisation of the Idea has critical ramifications for Hegel’s philo-
sophical system as a whole. Since Hegel presents the subject as disembodied
thought, the externalisation (or alienation) of the subject’s creative capacities
is treated as mere objects of thought. Or, as Marx puts it, ‘the products of men
appear as the products of the abstract spirit’.140 And since externalised objects
are mere thought-forms, Hegel poses the transcendence of externalisation or
alienation as the return of thought to itself – ‘Absolute Knowledge’ – and not
as return of humanity to itself.
In sum, the structure of Hegel’s philosophical system inverts the relation
of subject and predicate. Marx contends that, even when the Phenomenology
brilliantly illuminates the nature of real phenomena – such as civil society, the
family, and the state – it does so by treating them as emanations of the Idea.
What Marx had earlier pinpointed as the central flaw in the Philosophy of Right
– the inversion of subject and predicate – is now seen by him as the Achilles heel
of Hegel’s entire philosophy. Marx is here clearly relying heavily on Feuer-
bach’s The Essence of Christianity, the work in which Feuerbach made much of
Hegel’s inversion of subject and predicate.141
It is important to recognise, however, that by inversion Marx is not refer-
ring to Hegel’s prioritisation of ‘idealism’ over ‘materialism’. Marx’s critique
of the Phenomenology no more counterposes ‘materialism’ to Hegel’s ‘ideal-
ism’ than does his earlier analysis of the Philosophy of Right.142 As he did ear-
lier, Marx credits Hegel for his realistic insight into actual material conditions.
This is especially the case when it comes to the concept of labour. Marx writes
that the ‘outstanding achievement’ of Hegel’s Phenomenology ‘and of its final
outcome’ – a direct reference to the chapter on ‘Absolute Knowledge’ – is its
treatment of labour: ‘Hegel conceives the self-creation of man as a process, con-
ceives objectification as loss of the object, as alienation and as transcendence
139.â•‡ Marx 1975r, p. 334.

140.â•‡ Marx 1975r, p. 332.
141.â•‡ The fact that Marx is influenced at this point by Feuerbach’s critique of inversion
does not mean that he follows all aspects of it; nor, as I noted earlier, does it mean
that Marx derives the critique of this Hegelian inversion from Feuerbach.
142.â•‡ When he poses his own positive alternative to the defects that he finds in
Hegel, Marx argues for a unity of idealism and materialism: ‘Here we see how con-
sistent naturalism or humanism is distinct from both idealism and materialism, and
constitutes at the same time the unifying truth of both’. See Marx 1975r, p. 336.
of this alienation; that he grasps the essence of labour and comprehends objec-
tive man – true, because real man – as the outcome of man’s own labour’.143
Marx adds, ‘The only labour which Hegel knows and recognizes is abstractly
mental labour’.144 This is often taken to mean that Marx is accusing Hegel of
dealing only with intellectual labour, not the corporeal labour of the actual
process of production.145 On these grounds, they argue that Marx is counter-
posing a ‘materialist’ conception of labour to Hegel’s ‘idealism’. However, a
careful examination of the text raises serious questions about this interpreta-
tion. First, it is hard to imagine that Marx would have so superficial an under-
standing of Hegel as not to realise that the Phenomenology discusses labour in
concrete terms in numerous places – such as in the famous master-slave dialec-
tic. Second, the above interpretation fails to account for Marx’s view that the
Phenomenology gives a real account of human relations – labour among them.
So why does Marx write that Hegel recognises only abstractly mental
labour? Nicholas Lobkowicz, who takes issue with many traditional readings
of Marx’s critique of Hegel in Theory and Practice: History of a Concept from
Aristotle to Marx, helps supply us with the answer:
In short, Marx does not accuse Hegel of having treated labour as if it were
a thought activity. Rather, he accuses him of having in the Phenomenology
described human history in terms of a dialectic of consciousness, not in
terms of [a] dialectic of labour. When he says that the only labour which
Hegel recognizes is abstract mental labour, he has in mind the structure
of the Phenomenology and in fact of Hegel’s whole [philosophy], not the
passages on labour in the Phenomenology and other writings by Hegel. For
143.â•‡ Marx 1975r, pp. 332–3. Marx’s discussion here renders implausible Paolucci’s
(2007, p. 107) claim, ‘In sum, Marx rejected Kant’s a priori speculative philosophy,
Hegel’s mystical idealist dialecticâ•›.â•›.â•›.â•›Hegel and Kant failed because their philosophies
were not empirically rooted’. As numerous studies have shown, Hegel was a most
studious observer of empirical realities as well as of such disciplines as political
economy. His idealism, as is the case with many in the idealist tradition, resides in
his conception of the relation between ideas and empirical reality, not in a failure to
deal with the latter.
144.â•‡ Marx 1975r, p. 333.
145.â•‡ This interpretation especially characterises C.J. Arthur’s work. He writes, ‘The
first thing that should give us pause is that immediately after this praise Marx qualifies
it by complaining that “the only labour Hegel knows and recognizes is abstract mental
labour”. The servant’s labour is clearly material, so this remark shows that not only has
Marx not drawn on that analysis, but he has actually forgotten all about it and done
Hegel a minor injustice!’ It is hard to imagine that Marx could have ‘forgotten’ that
Hegel deals with non-mental labour throughout the Phenomenology – especially given
that Marx directly refers to passages where he does so in the ‘Critique of the Hegelian
Dialectic’ (see Marx 1975r, p. 331). Moreover, Arthur – like many others before and
after him – is conflating Hegel’s discussion of specific manifestations of labour with
the structure of his philosophical system as a whole. See Arthur 1983, pp. 67–75.
68 • Chapter One
what Marx wants to say is that Hegel’s description of the movement of

self-consciousness is an adulterated description of the historical movement
of labouring humanity.146
According to this reading, Hegel sees labour as the creative self-expression

of human creativity unfolding through the dialectical process of externalisa-
tion and the transcendence of externalisation. Marx was greatly indebted
to Hegel for this insight. However, Marx recognises that, by structuring his
system upon the notion of a disembodied subject, Hegel lacked access to a
vantage-point from which to envisage the actual transcendence of alienated
labour in capitalist society. Like the classical-political economists, he failed to
distinguish between labour as a transhistorical, creative expression of human-
ity’s ‘species-being’ and labour as the perverse reduction of such activity to
an absolute abstraction – value-production. In sum, Marx accuses Hegel of
seeing only the positive and not the negative side of labour.147 By conflating
alienated labour and ‘labour’, Hegel uncritically accommodates himself to the
peculiar social form of labour in capitalism.
As a result, his philosophical system becomes the expression of alienation
itself. As Lobkowicz succinctly puts it:
Marx claims that the very fact that Hegel translates the real dialectic of
labouring humanity into a dialectic of mentally labouring self-consciousness
is itself a reflection of alienated labourâ•›.â•›.â•›.â•›Hegel’s description of history as
a movement of mentally labouring self-consciousness is nothing but ‘the
self-objectificationâ•›.â•›.â•›.â•›of the alienated mind of the world within its self-
alienation’.148
Once again, the problem is not that Hegel fails to grasp reality. The problem is
that he grasps reality all too well. By inverting the relation of subject and predi-
cate, Hegel has provided a philosophical expression of ‘the general estrange-
146.â•‡ Lobkowicz 1967, p. 322.

147.â•‡ Marx may have altered his view of Hegel on this issue had he access to Hegel’s
early writings, which were not published until after his death. Hegel’s First Philosophy
of Spirit (1803/04) discusses labour in terms that are strikingly similar to Marx: ‘But
in the same ratio that the number produced rises, the value of labour falls; the labour
becomes that much deader, it becomes machine work, the skill of the single labourer is
infinitely limited.’ See Hegel 1979b, p. 248. Greater attentiveness to Hegel’s Philosophy
of Spirit as published in 1817 might also have led Marx to rethink his claim that Hegel
sees only the positive side of labour. Hegel writes, ‘The labour which thus becomes
more abstract tends on the one hand by its uniformity to make labour easier and to
increase production – on another to limit each person to a single kind of technical
skill, and thus produce more unconditional dependence on the social system’. See
Hegel 1978, pp. 257–8.
148.â•‡ Lobkowicz 1967, p. 343.
ment of the human being and therefore also of human thought’. Hegel has
‘brought these together and presented them as moments of the abstraction-
process’.149 In doing so the Phenomenology provides the philosophical expres-
sion of the very realities that Marx is determined to criticise.
Understanding the reason why Marx accuses Hegel of knowing ‘only
abstractly mental labour’ is of critical importance in pinpointing exactly what
he objects to in Hegel. The inversion that Marx objects to is not that Hegel gets
things upside-down by dealing with mental instead of material entities. He
objects to the way in which Hegel inverts the relation of subject and predicate, regard-
less of whether he is dealing with mental or material entities. Raya Dunayevskaya
argues, ‘Deeply rooted as Marx’s concept of Alienated Labour is in Hegel’s
theory of alienation, Marx’s analysis is no simple inversion (much less a
Feuerbachian inversion) of dealing with labour when Hegel was dealing only
with Consciousness’. 150 For all of its critical defects, Hegel’s Phenomenology,
Marx contends, nevertheless grasps, in an ‘estranged’ form, the ‘essence of
labour’ and ‘objective man’.151
We are now in a position to discern the similarities as well as differences
between Marx’s 1843 critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right and his 1844 cri-
tique of Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit and Encyclopedia of the Philosophical
Sciences. Marx turns to a critique of the Philosophy of Right in the midst of
an intense engagement with political reality, as part of his effort to discern
the limitations of existing political formations. He finds that the Philosophy
of Right provides the philosophical expression of these limitations. In 1844,
he turns to a critique of the Phenomenology of Spirit in the midst of an intense
engagement with economic reality, as part of his effort to discern the limits
of existing economic formations. He finds that the Phenomenology provides
the philosophical expression of these limitations. In posing the subject of dia-
lectical movement as disembodied self-consciousness, the ‘gallery of images’
and entities analysed in the Phenomenology are treated as mere thought-forms.
Since actual entities are treated as emanations of the Idea, Hegel adopts an
uncritical attitude towards them. Hegel’s Logic, Marx writes, is ‘the money of
the spirit’ – ‘its essence which has grown totally indifferent to real determi-
nateness’.152 Hegel’s philosophical system therefore expresses, Marx argues,
the very economic process of abstraction that is at the core of capitalism.
149.â•‡ Marx 1975r, p. 343.

150.â•‡ See Dunayevskaya 2003, p. 52.
151.â•‡ Marx 1975r, p. 333.
152.â•‡ Marx 1975r, p. 330. Marx’s ‘Notes on G.W.F. Hegel, Phenomenology of Spirit’,
written around the same time, also links Hegel’s Logic to the ‘money’ of the spirit.
For a translation of this document, see the Appendix.
70 • Chapter One
However, there is also a critical difference between Marx’s attitude towards

the Philosophy of Right and the Phenomenology of Spirit. Although Marx credits
the Philosophy of Right with expressing the alienated nature of modern poli-
tics, he never suggests that it intimates the transcendence of such realities. It
is a very different question when it comes to the Phenomenology. Instead of
completely rejecting the concept of self-movement through second negativ-
ity, Marx argues that it contains a key-insight: namely, that the transcendence
of alienation is reached as a result of a movement through second negativity.
Marx sees in this an ‘estranged insight’ that points to an alternative to capital-
ism – ‘positive humanism, beginning from itself’.153
Marx appropriates Hegel’s discussion of the dialectic of negativity in the
Phenomenology and Encyclopedia by arguing that the first negation is the aboli-
tion of private property. Yet this negation by no means ensures liberation;
on the contrary, ‘this type of abolition of private property isâ•›.â•›.â•›.â•›only a retro-
gression, a sham universality’. He calls it ‘the abstract negation of the entire
world of culture and civilization’.154 This ‘vulgar communist’ negation of pri-
vate property must itself be negated in order to reach liberation. Whether this
type of communism is ‘democratic or despotic’ makes little difference: it is
defective because it is infected with its opposite in focusing exclusively on the
question of property. To abolish capital the negation of private property must
itself be negated. Only then would there arise ‘positive Humanism, begin-
ning from itself’. For this reason, Marx calls genuine communism (which he
equates to ‘a thoroughgoing Naturalism or Humanism’) ‘the position as the
negation of the negation’.155
It is on this issue of the negation of the negation that Marx parts company
with Feuerbach, who rejected the concept tout court as a mystical abstraction
that has no bearing on reality. Marx writes:
Feuerbach thus conceives the negation of the negation only as the contradiction
of philosophy with itself – as the philosophy which affirms Theology (the
transcendent, etc.) after having denied itâ•›.â•›.â•›.â•›But because Hegel has conceived
153.â•‡ This crucial difference between Marx’s critique of the Philosophy of Right and the
Phenomenology of Spirit helps explain why he felt the need to return to a close textual
engagement with Hegel in 1844, after issuing such a sharp criticism of him in 1843.
Despite the importance of his critique of the Philosophy of Right, it is circumscribed
by the limits of its subject-matter – Hegel’s political theory, which does not intimate
a transcendence of capitalist alienation. Marx returns to ‘settle accounts’ with Hegel
in 1844 because the Phenomenology discloses something that is not found in the Phi-
losophy of Right – an intimation, ‘estranged’ as it is, of the transcendence of alienation
through double negation.
154.â•‡ Marx 1975r, p. 295.
155.â•‡ Marx 1975r, p. 306.
the negation of the negation from the point of view of the positive relation
inherent in it, to that extent he has discovered, though only as an abstract,
logical, and speculative expression, the movement of historyâ•›.â•›.â•›.156
Marx then writes, ‘It is now time to formulate the positive aspects of the
Hegelian dialectic within the realm of estrangement’. What he praises is noth-
ing less than Hegel’s concept of the transcendence157 of alienation through second
negativity:
Supersession as an objective movement of retracting the alienation into
self. This is the insight, expressed within the estrangement, concerning
the appropriation of the objective essence through the supersession of its
estrangement: it is the estranged insight into the real objectification of man,
into the real appropriation of his objective essence through the annihilation
of the estranged character of the objective worldâ•›.â•›.â•›.158
Marx contends that the transcendence of alienation in Hegel represents the

mere return of thought to itself because Hegel treats the subject of the dia-
lectic as disembodied self-consciousness. However, Marx holds that when
this defect is corrected by treating ‘real corporeal man’159 as the subject of the
dialectic, this same concept of the transcendence of alienation through double
negation expresses the path to freedom – which he refers to as the ‘return of
man from religion, family, state, etc., to his human, i.e., social existence’.160
Marx’s intense focus on Hegel’s concept of ‘the negation of the negation’ is
also evident in his Excerpt-Notes on the chapter ‘Absolute Knowledge’, com-
posed around the same time as the 1844 ‘Critique’. Although Hegel actually
never explicitly mentions the term ‘negation of the negation’ in the chapter
on ‘Absolute Knowledge’, Marx singles it out as a conceptual determinant
underpinning that chapter and the Phenomenology of Spirit as a whole. He
summarises the chapter on ‘Absolute Knowledge’ as follows:
Being, Essence, Concept; Universality. Particularity. Individuality. Position.
Negation. Negation of the Negation; simple, differentiated, transcended
opposition. Immediacy. Mediation. Self-transcending mediation. Being
in itself. Externalisation. Return to itself from externalization. In-itself.
For-itself. In-and-for-itself. Unity. Differentiation. Self-differentiation.
156.â•‡ Marx 1975r, p. 329.

157.â•‡ Aufhebung is sometimes translated as ‘sublation’ instead of ‘transcendence’. In
either case, it refers to a state in which something is both ‘negated’ and ‘preserved’
in the sense of ‘raised to a higher level’.
158.â•‡ Marx 1975r, p. 341.
159.â•‡ Marx 1975r, p. 336.
160.â•‡ Marx 1975r, p. 297.
72 • Chapter One
Identity. Negation. Negativity. Logic. Nature. Spirit. Pure Consciousness.

Consciousness. Self-Consciousness. Concept. Judgment. Syllogism.161
Most critically of all, Marx’s intense focus on Hegel’s concept of self-move-

ment through second negativity leads him to posit a vision of a new society
that surpasses the limitations of other radicals on the scene at the time. This
is especially seen in his discussion of man/woman relations. Taking off from
an insight voiced by Fourier, he argues that ‘In this relationship, therefore, is
sensuously manifested, reduced to an observable fact, the extent to which the
human essence has become nature to man, or to which nature to him has
become the human essence of man. From this relationship one can there-
fore judge man’s whole level of development.’162 He quickly moves beyond
Fourier’s position, however, by attacking the idea of the communal posses-
sion of women. He contends that ‘this idea of the community of women gives
away the secret of this as yet completely crude and thoughtless communism.’163
Marx says the ‘crude communist’ attempt to replace private ownership of
women by the patriarchal family with their collective ownership by a com-
munity does posit a ‘negation’ of traditional social formations. But it is a mere
‘abstract negation’164 because it fails to liberate women from being owned,
from being treated as sexual objects. In Hegelian dialectics, ‘abstract nega-
tion’ corresponds to the first negation. First negativity remains dependent on
its object of critique, since the negation of the other fails to free itself from
its presuppositions. The initial negation of private property, whether in the
factory or the family, remains dependent on its object of critique insofar as
it presupposes that having is more important than being. It merely replaces
private ownership with collective ownership. Just as in the labour-process
‘the category of the worker is not done away with, but extended to all men’,
so in the man/woman relation the domination of women is not abolished, but
becomes extended to all women. In subjecting the crude communists to critique
for favouring the community of women, Marx is specifying the shortcomings of stop-
ping short of the negation of the negation. Genuine communism for Marx does
not consist of the mere abolition of private property in either the sphere of
material production or sexual reproduction. Genuine communism represents
the negation of that very negation. The latter is concrete or absolute negativity.
For this reason he concludes this section of the 1844 Manuscripts by writing
that genuine ‘communism is the position as the negation of the negation’.165
161.â•‡ See the Appendix, below, p. 217.

162.â•‡ Marx 1975r, pp. 295–6.
163.â•‡ Marx 1975r, p. 294.
164.â•‡ Marx 1975r, p. 295.
165.â•‡ Marx 1975r, p. 306.
Through his critical appropriation of the concept of self-movement through

absolute negativity, Marx’s 1844 Manuscripts projects a truly new and revolu-
tionary world-conception, one which takes him far from the positions held by
other socialists and communists of the time.166 He sees the process of revolu-
tionary transformation not as a singular act, as the negation of private prop-
erty and political overthrow of the bourgeoisie, necessary as that is, but as
a consistently self-critical social revolution, that is, as a process of permanent
revolution. Crude communism – the abolition of private property – is only
the first negation. It is a necessary but insufficient step towards liberation. To
achieve ‘positive humanism, beginning from itself’ much more is needed –
the negation of the negation. Unlike Feuerbach, who rejects Hegel on the
grounds that he posits positivity as a result of a logical movement, the move-
ment through negation and double negation, Marx finds in this very move-
ment an ‘estranged’ insight into how ‘positive humanism’ – a world free from
alienation – actually comes into being. While Marx is highly critical of the way
in which Hegel presents the dialectic of negativity, he appropriates Hegel’s
concept of self-movement through absolute negativity when it comes to pro-
jecting his own conception of the future.167
166.â•‡ Many have overlooked the fact that in the very work in which Marx praises
Feuerbach the most – his 1844 ‘Critique of the Hegelian Dialectic’ – is where he parts
company with him, precisely on the issue of Feuerbach’s wholesale rejection of Hegel’s
concept of the transcendence of alienation through the negation of the negation. A
striking illustration of this is Patrick Murray’s sometimes-valuable Marx’s Theory of
Scientific Knowledge. Murray places great emphasis on Marx’s critique of Hegel’s Logic
for representing ‘the money of the spirit’; however, he does not so much as mention the
passages in which Marx praises Hegel’s concept of the transcendence or supersession
of alienation. Although he mentions in passing Marx’s ‘humanism’, he fails to connect
it to Marx’s critical appropriation of Hegel’s concept of the negation of the negation.
This tendency to emphasise Marx’s debt to Hegel as being limited to the concept of
externalisation or alienation has a lengthy history in Marx scholarship. Especially
influential along these lines is Georg Lukács’s The Young Hegel, which contends that
Entäusserung is the ‘central philosophical concept’ of both Hegel’s Phenomenology
and Marx’s appropriation of Hegel’s dialectic. See Lukács 1976, pp. 537–68. Lukács
likewise fails to single out Marx’s praise of Hegel’s discussion of the supersession of
alienation. For a detailed criticism of Lukács’ position, see Hudis 1989. I am suggest-
ing in this work that the reluctance of many commentators to recognise that Marx
critically appropriates Hegel’s conception of the transcendence of alienation through
second negativity appears to be connected to the fact that they refrain from entering
into a discussion of Marx’s conception of the alternative to capitalism.
167.â•‡ Stathis Kouvelakis therefore makes a highly questionable assertion when he
writes, ‘As for the philosophy that culminates in the Hegelian system, it is merely the
reflexive consciousness of this alienation, a purely speculative, formal and abstract
transcendence of the limits alienation imposes’. This one-sided reading overlooks
the fact that Marx sees a positive dimension within Hegel’s ‘speculative’ concept of
transcendence that he appropriates for his own understanding of the kind of society
that must replace capitalism. See Kouvelakis 2003, p. 168.
74 • Chapter One
Marx goes so far as to write, ‘Communism is the necessary form and

dynamic principle of the immediate future, but communism as such is not the
goal of human development, the form of human society’.168 But if communism
is only the immediate but not ultimate goal, what is Marx really striving for?
It appears that it is what he calls ‘a totality of human manifestations of life’.169
He refers to a new society as one that ‘produces man in this entire richness
of his being – produces the rich man profoundly endowed with all the senses – as
its enduring reality’.170 This is far beyond what he calls ‘crude communism’,
which like capitalism reduces human sensuousness to one sense – the sense
of having. Yet it is not clear that Marx considers even genuine communism or
‘positive humanism’ as the end or goal of human development, in that mani-
festing a totality of latent and acquired sensuous abilities is an endless process
of becoming. Perhaps it was not without good reason Marx spoke of continuing
the revolution ‘in permanence’.
Marx peers into the future in the 1844 Manuscripts in asking what would
happen when we ‘Assume man to be man, and his relationship to the world
to be a human world’. When that is achieved there would be exchange – but
an exchange of ‘love only for love, trust only for trust, etc.’. If one wants to
enjoy any manifestation of life, be it art or anything else, one would need
to develop a sense for it. Simply obtaining things in lieu of such attunement
leaves one impoverished. ‘Every one of your relations to man and to nature
must be a specific expression, corresponding to the object of your will, of your
real individual life’171 – which is another way of saying that ‘All emancipation is
a reduction of the human world and relationships to man himself ’.172
It can be argued that much of what Marx is discussing about the future is
vague and indeterminate. He surely provides little or no discussion of the
institutional forms173 that might help promote a totality of manifestations of
life. Yet it would be a mistake to interrupt the apparently ethereal character of
much of Marx’s discussion to mean that he was either unclear about the kind
168.â•‡ Marx 1975r, p. 306.

169.â•‡ Marx 1975r, p. 299.
170.â•‡ Marx 1975r, p. 302.
171.â•‡ Marx 1975r, p. 326.
172.â•‡ Marx 1975o, p. 168.
173.â•‡ The closest Marx comes in 1844 to discussing institutional forms of a new
society is in his discussion of landed property in the First Manuscript, where he
argues against both monopolisation of land and dividing up the land into small pri-
vate holdings. He advocates an ‘association’ of producers that ‘shares the economic
advantage of large-scale landed property’ as well as ‘the original tendency’ towards
equality. At this point, he does not mention nationalisation or state-ownership of the
land. See Marx 1975r, p. 268.
of society that he wanted or that he saw no need to envisage the nature of an

alternative to capital at all. He writes in the 1844 Manuscripts,
In order to abolish the idea of private property, the idea of communism is
quite sufficient. It takes actual communist action to abolish actual private
property. History will lead to it; and this movement, which in theory we
already know to be a self-transcending movement, will constitute in actual
fact a very rough and protracted process. But we must regard it as a real
advance to have at the outset gained a consciousness of the limited character
as well as of the goal of this historical movement – and a consciousness that
reaches out beyond it.174
Far from refraining from any discussion about the future, Marx is here reflect-
ing on the future on two levels. One is the idea of communism – the immediate
principle of the future – that has as its task the elimination of private property
and alienated labour. The other is a realisation of the idea of freedom that is
much more open-ended and harder to define or even give a name to, since
it involves the return of humanity to itself as a sensuous being exhibiting
a totality of manifestations of life. Marx considers it a ‘real advance’ to be
able to say this much about the future. We now need to see how he will
further specify this when faced with an array of specific social tendencies
and problems.
Discerning the ideal within the real, 1845–8

Upon completing the 1844 Manuscripts, Marx becomes directly involved in
workers’ movements and writes a series of works to further clarify his break
from capitalism and the need to replace it with a totally new kind of society,
culminating in his famous Communist Manifesto.175 His writings of 1845–7 con-
tain especially rich reflections about the alternative to capitalism. The central
issue that concerns him is summed up in a passage in The German Ideology:
‘Individuals always proceeded, and always proceed, from themselves. Their
relations are the relations of their real life process. How does it happen that
their relations assume an independent existence over against them? And that
the forces of their own life become superior to them?’176
174.â•‡ Marx 1975r, p. 313.

175.â•‡ The Manifesto was written in late December 1847 and first published (in London,
in the German original) in February 1848. It was written primarily by Marx, though
Marx and Engels were listed as co-authors. Engels had originally been commissioned
by the Communist League to write it, but Marx considerably revised his initial draft,
entitled ‘Principles of Communism’, in the Manifesto itself.
176.â•‡ Marx and Engels 1976a, p. 93.
76 • Chapter One
Marx is specifying the inversion of subject and predicate as the defining

feature of modern social existence, in that the relations formed by individuals
become a ‘person apart’ that governs their lives without their consent. His
primary criticism of contemporary thinkers is that they fall prey to this inver-
sion. In The Holy Family, he makes a critique of Bruno Bauer and other young
Hegelians for presenting ‘truth as an automaton that proves itself’. For them,
‘history, like truth, becomes a person apart, a metaphysical subject of which
the real human individuals are mere bearers’.177 He writes in reply: ‘History
does nothing, it “possesses no immense wealth,” it “wages no battles”. It is
man, real, living man who does all that, who possesses and fights: “history”
is not, as it were, a person apart, using man as a means to achieve its own
aims; history is nothing but the activity of man pursuing his aims’.178 On these
grounds, he rejects the view that history unfolds in necessarily-progressive
stages. He pours scorn upon Bauer’s contention that socialists and commu-
nists endorse unilinear theories of progressive improvement. Marx insists that
the very opposite is the case, since figures like Fourier considered ‘progress’
to be no more than an ‘abstract phrase’. Marx writes, ‘In spite of the preten-
sions of “Progress”, continual retrogressions and circular movements occurâ•›.â•›.â•›.â•›the
category, “Progress” is completely empty and abstract’.179 Holding that his-
tory is destined to proceed along fixed ‘progressive’ lines assumes that we are
helpless victims (or beneficiaries) of what we ourselves create.
On the same grounds, he attacks those who pose ‘society’ as a quasi-auton-
omous force. The German Ideology states, ‘Society is abstracted from these indi-
viduals, it is made independent, it relapses into a savagery of its own, and the
individuals suffer as a result of their relapse’.180 Marx is further developing his
understanding of the relation between civil society and the state that he first
formulated in his critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right. He attacks the notion
that the state holds together civil society. On the contrary, it is civil society
that holds together the state.181 This is in keeping with his view that the state is
177.â•‡ Engels and Marx 1975, p. 79. Although the vast bulk of The Holy Family was
written by Marx, with only a very short section written by Engels, as a sign of appre-
ciation Marx insisted on including Engels’s name before his own on the title page.
178.â•‡ Engels and Marx, p. 93.
179.â•‡ Engels and Marx, p. 83. Marx’s view of progress appears to be in accord with
what a number of scholars contend is Hegel’s position as well. H.S. Harris writes,
‘There is nothing in [Hegel’s] logical theory to warrant the belief that the motion of
consciousness must always be progressive. Every position of consciousness contains
the earlier positions in a sublated form, and every position is a stable circle that can
maintain itself against criticism. Thus stability is “natural” and regression is just as
possible as progress’. See Harris 1995, p. 107.
181.â•‡ See especially the discussion of this is in Engels and Marx 1975, pp. 120–2.
an edifice created by mutually-interacting individuals, instead of being some

autonomous force that shapes civil society of its own accord. Marx is not sat-
isfied, however, with simply pointing out the logical priority of civil society
over the state. He wants to know why the state appears to have priority over
civil society. The answer lies in the limits of civil society itself. He asks,
How is it that personal interests always develop, against the will of the
individuals, into class interests, into common interests which acquire
independent existence in relation to the individual persons, and in their
independence assume the form of general interests?â•›.â•›.â•›.â•›How is it that in
this process of private interests acquiring independent existence as class
interests the personal behavior of the individual is bound to be objectified,
estranged, and at the same time exists as a power independent of man and
without him?182
His answer is that ‘definite modes of production’ arise that compel civil soci-
ety to take the form of incompatible relations between private and general
interests. The abstraction of individual from general interests makes necessary
a state that externally mediates the relation between these mutually-antag-
onistic forces. The state, a product of human activity, now takes on a life
of its own and governs the behaviour of individuals behind their backs –
because of the limitations of civil society. He therefore argues in the ‘Theses
on Feuerbach’, ‘The standpoint of the old materialism is civil society; that of
the new is human society, or social humanity’.183
‘Social humanity’ is not, however, a ‘person apart’ that externally imposes
its will upon individuals. It is, rather, a condition in which individuals freely
relate to themselves and each other on the basis of their self-activity.184 Marx
refers to this in the 1844 Manuscripts as: ‘Above all we must avoid again pos-
tulating “society” as an abstraction vis-à-vis the individual. The individual is
the social being’. Marx is not trying to wall humanity into the ‘social’; he rather
seeks a mutual compatibility between individual and general interests.185
Yet exactly how does the present mode of production compel civil society to
assume an abstract form? The answer is the social division of labour. By forc-
ing individuals to adhere to a social division of labour, individuals become

183.â•‡ Marx 1976a, p. 5. Marx also contends that civil society is the standpoint of
classical political economy, a tendency that he strongly opposes.
184.â•‡ Marx writes in The Holy Family, ‘Society behaves just as exclusively as the state,
only in a more polite form; it does not throw you out, but it makes it so uncomfortable
for you that you go out of your own free will’. See Engels and Marx 1975, p. 96.
185.â•‡ For a searing criticism of twentieth-century ‘socialism’, which ‘walls man into
his socialness’, see Kosik 1976.
78 • Chapter One
radically separated from one other. This separation takes on a fixed form,
regardless of their actual talents and abilities. Society becomes an abstraction
that governs the lives of individuals, instead of the other way around: ‘As
long as man remains in naturally evolved society, that is, as long as the cleav-
age exists between the particular and the common interest, so long, therefore,
as activity is not voluntary, but naturally, divided, man’s own deed becomes
an alien power opposed to him, which enslaves him instead of being con-
trolled by him.’186
We have reached the acme of subject-predicate inversion. Marx is now sup-
plying a historical, materialist explanation for the inversion that he objected to
so strongly in his analyses of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right and Phenomenology of
Spirit.
How is this inversion to be overcome? By abolishing the social division of
labour. Once individuals are allowed to freely pursue a variety of talents and
tasks as befits their particular nature, instead of having their role ‘fixed’ by
some pre-ordained social power ‘above’ them, a new society would exist. He
famously describes such a society as follows: ‘[I]n communist society, where
nobody has one exclusive sphere of activity but each can become accom-
plished in any branch he wishes, society regulates the general production and
thus makes it possible for me to do one thing today and another tomorrow, to
hunt in the morning, fish in the afternoon, rear cattle in the evening, criticize
after dinner, just as I have a mind, without every becoming a hunter, fisher-
man, shepherd, or critic.’187
Marx clearly has some notion of a postcapitalist society. Yet he remains
wary as of this point about saying much more about it. Instead, he writes, ‘It
is not a question of what this or that proletarian, or even the whole proletariat,
at the moment regards as its aim. It is a question of what the proletariat is, and
what, according to this being, it will historically be compelled to do’.188
Marx’s reticence about indulging in detailed speculation about the future
society – in place of what the proletariat itself is and is compelled to do – is
closely connected to his opposition to the subject-predicate inversion. Pos-
ing a vision of the new society for the proletariat, or irrespective of what it is,
amounts to foisting a product of intelligence or imagination upon the actual
subject of history. Much of what Marx has criticised in capitalism in his early
writings centres on the tendency to foist the products of human development
upon the subject, irrespective of its own needs and desires. Why would he now

187.â•‡ Ibid. Note that Marx does not mention to the state as regulating the general
production, but rather society.
188.â•‡ Engels and Marx 1975, p. 37.
favour promoting a vision of the new society irrespective of the proletariat’s

needs and desires? Furthermore, a major theme that Marx has emphasised
since his doctoral dissertation (if not earlier) has been the need to discern the
ideal from within the real. Indulging in speculation about the future, irrespec-
tive of the subjective force that can realise the ideal, amounts to a violation of
one of Marx’s primary normative standpoints.
Early in 1845, not long after composing The Holy Family, Marx develops a
new concept that represents a further expression of his effort to discern the
forms of the future from within the contours of the present. In his ‘Draft of
an Article on Friedrich List’s Book Das Nationale System der politischen Ökono-
mie’, he poses the development of modern industry as providing the material
conditions for a postcapitalist society. He writes of ‘the power which industry
has without knowing or willing it and which destroys it and creates the basis
for a human existence’.189 This power is in the proletariat, which is produced
by modern industry. Utilising a metaphor he will later employ in Capital and
other writings, the proletariat is the ‘human kernel’ contained within the
‘shell’ of industry that will burst forth from its further development. Indus-
try, the product of human activity, takes on a life of its own and becomes the
subjective force of capitalist society. Although Marx opposes this inversion,
he now sees in it the seeds of an inversion of the inversion, since the point will
one day be reached when the product of industry – the workers – will step
forth as the real subject, as the ‘bearers of human development’. History in the
modern era takes on a life of its own and operates behind the backs of its par-
ticipants; but in doing so, it brings forth the subjective force that can dissolve
this upside-down world. Genuine history will at that point finally begin.
The German Ideology further develops this by emphasising the development
of the productive forces as the pre-condition for communism. The produc-
tive forces include technology, scientific knowledge, and the overall level of
industry. The most important productive force is the proletariat, which is
generated by all three. Any effort to create a communist society without the
development of these productive forces, he argues, would ensure that com-
munism remains a local and transient phenomenon. ‘The proletariat can thus
exist only world-historically, just as communism, its activity, can only have
a “world-historical” existence’.190 Marx rejected any conception that social-
ism or communism could be created in a single isolated country or group of
countries.
189.â•‡ Marx 1975s, p. 282.

80 • Chapter One
What will help bring communism into being, Marx suggests, is capitalism’s
drive to subject all human relations to value-production through the creation
of a world-market. Capitalism’s inherent drive for global expansion contains
within itself the material conditions for its dissolution. He concludes, ‘Com-
munism is for us not a state of affairs which is to be established, an ideal to
which reality [will] have to adjust itself. We call communism the real move-
ment which abolishes the present state of things’.191
This does not mean, however, that consciousness of a future communist soci-
ety is unnecessary. He argues that ‘communist consciousness’ on a mass-scale
is needed because ‘an alteration of men on a mass scale is necessary’. It is
needed not just to overthrow the bourgeoisie, but in order for a revolution
to ‘succeed in ridding itself of all the muck of the ages and become fitted to
found society anew’.192 If society itself brings about the millennium in quasi-
automatic fashion, it remains a ‘person apart’ insofar as the social individual is
concerned. The ‘perverse’ inversion of subject and predicate that characterises
capitalism remains in place, and with it, the ‘muck of the ages’. This inversion
can only be inverted through the conscious intervention of a human subject
that strives to reorganise social relations from top to bottom. Marx has not
departed from, but rather has made more concrete, his insistence (expressed
in a letter to Ruge) of 1843 that ‘consciousness is something that [humanity]
has to acquire, even if it does not want to’.193
It may appear that there is a tension or contradiction between these two
sides of formulating the issue. On the one hand, communism is a state of
affairs that will emerge immanently from the contradictions of capitalism; yet,
on the other hand, it remains necessary to develop an awareness of a future
communist society in order for a revolution to succeed in radically altering
human relations. However, on closer examination, there is no tension or con-
tradiction in Marx’s position at all. He consistently holds throughout his life
that revolutionary consciousness spontaneously emerges from the oppressed
in response to an array of specific material conditions. He does not hold that
such consciousness is brought ‘to’ the masses ‘from without’ – in direct con-
trast to Lassalle, Kautsky and Lenin, who held the contrary position.194 At
the same time, Marx does not equate the consciousness that emerges from
the oppressed with revolutionary theory. The latter does not emerge spon-
taneously from the masses, but from hard conceptual labour on the part of
theoreticians. Revolutionary theory needs to elicit and build upon mass
191.â•‡ Ibid.
193.â•‡ Marx 1975m, p. 144.
194.â•‡ For more on this, see Hudis 1998.
consciousness, but it is not reducible to it. If it were no different than mass-

consciousness, it would be impossible for Marx, or anyone else for that matter,
to explain the objectivity of their subjective role as theoreticians. In other words,
while the class- and socialist consciousness that spontaneously emerges from
the masses is of critical importance, it is not the full equivalent of a philosophy
of revolution that helps disclose the complex forms and dynamics of capitalism
as well as the alternative to it. On these grounds, Marx holds that the imma-
nent rhythm of reality will prepare the way for an alternative; yet he does not
appear to assume that its emergence is for that reason guaranteed.195 Hard
and continuous theoretical and philosophical labour that is rooted in, but not
reducible to, the consciousness of the oppressed, is needed to help bring forth
a conceptual alternative. Marx, therefore, feels that nothing prohibits him
from directly discussing the distinguishing feature of a postcapitalist society
even as he warns against engaging in idle speculation about the nature of
such a state of affairs:
Communism differs from all previous movements in that it overturns the
basis of all earlier relations of production and intercourse, and for the first
time consciously treats all naturally evolved premises as the creations of
hitherto existing menâ•›.â•›.â•›.â•›Its organization is, therefore, essentially economic,
the material production of the conditions of this unity; it turns existing
conditions into conditions of unity. The reality which communism creates
is precisely the true basis for rendering it impossible that anything should
exist independently of individuals, in so far as reality is nevertheless only
a product of the preceding intercourse of individuals.196
Marx is here defining the new society that he is striving for on the basis of
a critique of subject-predicate inversion and on the basis of the normative
principle that ‘All emancipation is a reduction of the human world and rela-
tionships to man himself’.197
He further specifies additional aspects of a postcapitalist society in his
writings of 1845–7. He argues that in such a society the proletariat does not
become the ruling class, since there are neither classes nor a proletariat. The
proletariat simply ceases to exist: ‘When the proletariat is victorious, it by
195.â•‡ The same is true, of course, when it comes to obtaining a proper understanding
of capital and capitalism. Many people realise on their own initiative that capitalism
is an unfair and exploitative system; but that is not the same as composing a work
such as Marx’s Capital, which aims to grasp capital’s ‘law of motion’ by penetrating
its mystifying, albeit necessarily-mystifying, forms of appearance. Simply agreeing on
the need to develop an alternative does not by itself constitute one.
197.â•‡ Marx 1975o, p. 168.
82 • Chapter One
no means becomes the absolute side of society, for it is victorious only by

abolishing itself and its opposite. Then the proletariat disappears’.198 He also
writes that since ‘the communist revolution is directed against the hitherto
existing mode of activity’ it ‘does away with labour’.199 Marx does not suggest
that laboring-activity literally comes to an end, but that ‘the whole opposition
between work and enjoyment disappears’.200 ‘Labour’ as an activity distinct
from the enjoyment of a wealth of sensuous possibilities no longer mediates
social interaction and reproduction. Labour in this sense is abolished.
Along these lines, he further develops the emphasis of the 1844 Manuscripts
on developing ‘a totality of manifestations of life’ as a defining feature of the
new society. He now speaks of the ‘development of a totality of desires’, argu-
ing that individuals become fixated on a small number of desires when soci-
ety prevents them from pursuing a wide range of them. Marx thinks it is an
‘absurdity’ to presume that one can satisfy one passion or desire ‘apart from
all others’. When one passion is pursued at the expense of a multiplicity of
desires, the passion becomes interminable; it ‘assumes an abstract, isolated
character’ and confronts the individual as ‘an alien power’.201 He reiterates his
earlier critique of the interminable desire to have, which becomes overwhelm-
ing in capitalism.
Partly on these grounds, the Communist Manifesto notes that ‘buying and
selling’ – the market – disappears in a communist society. Yet he reserves
his harshest words for the market in labour-power: ‘Communism does not
deprive man of the power to appropriate the products of society; all that it
does is to deprive him of the power to subjugate the labour of others by means
of such appropriation’.202
In the Manifesto, Marx also writes that ‘the theory of the Communists may
be summed up in the single sentence: Abolition of private property’.203 It may
seem that Marx has muted, if not moved away from, his perspective of 1844,
in that the abolition of private property here seems to be posed not just as a
mediatory stage, but as the ultimate goal. However, this would be too facile a
reading. Marx focuses on the need to negate private property because it is the
most immediate expression of the power of bourgeois society over the worker.
Through the bourgeois property-relation, the workers are forced to sell them-
selves for a wage to the owners of capital, who appropriate the products of

202.â•‡ Marx and Engels 1976b, p. 500.
their productive activity. Without the abolition of this property-relation, the

economic and political domination of the bourgeoisie remains unchallenged.
However, this does not mean that Marx has forgotten about, or is downplay-
ing, alienated labour. Though the phrase ‘alienated labour’ does not appear
in the Manifesto, it does single out the need to uproot the conditions of labour.
Right before citing the need to abolish private property, it states:
Owing to the extensive use of machinery and to the division of labour, the
work of the proletarians has lost all individual character, and, consequently,
all charm for the workman. He becomes an appendage of the machine, and
it is only the most simple, most monotonous and most easily acquired knack,
that is required of him.â•›.â•›.â•›. In proportion, therefore, as the repulsiveness of
the work increases, the wage decreases.204
In another passage reminiscent of the language found in the 1844 Manuscripts,

he writes, ‘In bourgeois society capital is independent and has individuality,
while the living person is dependent and has no individuality’.205 He goes
on to say that the abolition of this condition is the essence of proletarian
revolution: ‘The proletarians cannot become masters of the productive forces
of society, except by abolishing their own previous mode of appropriation,
and thereby also every other previous mode of appropriation’.206 Only after
writing this does he state:
The distinguishing feature of Communism is not the abolition of property
generally, but the abolition of bourgeois property. But modern bourgeois
private property is the final and most complete expression of the system of
producing and appropriating products that is based on class antagonisms,
on the exploitation of the many by the few. In this sense, the theory of
the Communists may be summed up in the single sentence: Abolition of
private property.207
It is important not to read the Manifesto selectively, by skipping over the

phrase ‘in this sense’ in the last sentence and the word ‘but’ in the previ-
ous one. That Marx did not alter his view of the relation between alienated
labour and private property between 1844 and 1847 is further confirmed by
what he writes in an article written at around the same time as the Manifesto:
‘[P]rivate property, for instance, is not a simple relation or even an abstract
concept, a principle, but consists in the totality of the bourgeois relations of
204.â•‡ Marx and Engels 1976b, pp. 490–1.

84 • Chapter One
productionâ•›.â•›.â•›.â•›a change in, or even the abolition of, these relations can only
follow from a change in these classes and their relationships with each other,
and a change in the relationship of classes is a historical change, a product
of social activity as a whole’.208
Most importantly, Marx emphasises the need to address the goals of a
new society, in the section of the Manifesto dealing with ‘the relation of com-
munists to the proletarians as a whole’. He singles out the distinctive contri-
butions of communists as: (1) internationalism instead of nationalism; and
(2) ‘always and everywhere [they] represent the interests of the movement as
a whole’. He then states that the communists put forth ‘the ultimate general
results of the proletarian movement’.209 This raises an important issue: if the
defining role of the communist party is to understand and transmit the ‘ulti-
mate results’ of the struggle, how can Marx, who is authoring the Communist
Manifesto, claim not to have some idea of those results? Moreover, the Mani-
festo begins by stating, ‘It is high time that communists should openlyâ•›.â•›.â•›.â•›pub-
lish their views’.210 And it concludes by stating, ‘The Communists fight for
the attainment of the immediate aims, for the enforcement of the momentary
interests of the working class; but in the movement of the present, they also
represent and take care of the future of that movement’.211
It therefore appears that Marx is not opposed to addressing the ultimate
goal of a new society. What is at issue is how to go about doing so. Marx
opposes any tendency to project a vision of a postcapitalist society that comes
out of the theoretician’s own head, independent of the actual struggles of the
proletariat. But that does not mean that he opposes projecting a conception of
the ultimate goal that is based on ‘the actual struggles springing from exist-
ing class struggles’.212 It is important not to conflate these two points. Marx
opposes utopian socialists for projecting a view of the future that comes out
of their heads rather than from the actual struggles of the real subject – the
proletariat. Although many of the utopians were familiar with Feuerbach’s
critique of subject-predicate inversion, Marx’s position seems to be that they
fall into this very same inversion on another level by posing the results of
208.â•‡ Marx 1976c, p. 337.

209.â•‡ Marx and Engels 1976b, p. 497. This discussion should not be confused with
the end of Section II of the Manifesto, which discusses the immediate goals of the com-
munist movement – such as the centralisation of credit, communications, factories,
and instruments of production ‘in the hands of the state’. Marx is here not discussing
socialism or communism, but a political transitional form immediately following the
working classes’ seizure of political power. In discussing the ultimate goals of the
communists in the Manifesto, Marx makes no reference to the state.
their thinking as the subject of history. Thus, Marx’s criticism of subject-

predicate inversion not only underlies his critique of bourgeois society as
well as of Hegel’s philosophy, it also underlines his understanding of how
to bring to consciousness the ultimate goals that he believes are worth living
and dying for.
Evaluating the young Marx’s concept of a postcapitalist society

This discussion by the young Marx indicates that his approach to articulating
an alternative to existing society centres on viewing the ideal as immanent
within the real. He therefore opposes any effort to introduce a speculative
discussion of the future, irrespective of actual material conditions and forces
of liberation. That does not mean, however, that Marx opposes positing any
conception of an alternative at all. His main concern is with the manner of
projecting an alternative, not whether or not to do so.
I have also so far shown that Marx came to view such phenomena as private
property, alienated labour, and the separation of civil society and the state as
problematic because of a set of normative concerns that he brought to bear
upon his study of capitalism. Without these normative concerns, his critique
of capitalism would hardly have been possible. This raises the question of
how Marx’s normative standpoint affected his view of the market. A study by
Allan Megill – The Burden of Reason (Why Marx Rejected Politics and the Market)
– raises important questions about this issue. Megill contends that Marx was
not so much a ‘materialist’ as a rationalist who privileged universality, neces-
sity, and predictability in his approach to historical phenomena. Like Hegel,
he ‘aimed to discover underlying logical essences that, he claimed, could not
be discovered merely by generalizing from empirical data’.213 He therefore
finds the claim that Marx was a ‘materialist’ as constituting a superficial and
one-sided reading of his work. Marx did not privilege matter over conscious-
ness; on the contrary, Megill argues, Marx raised consciousness or reason to
a veritable universal in emphasising how it is embedded in historical phenom-
ena. Megill writes,
Marx was profoundly influenced by a Hegelian conception of rationality,
in which logic equates to ontology and in which ontology thus equates
to mind, or spirit, thinking. Hegel’s ontologization of logic resonated in
Marx’s work throughout the whole of his intellectual career. It is thus an
egregious error to think that Marx can be adequately characterized as a
213.â•‡ Megill 2002, p. 3.

86 • Chapter One
materialist, at least as the term materialist is normally usedâ•›.â•›.â•›.â•›Hegel and

Marx, like many other nineteenth century thinkers, adhered to the notion
of embedded rationality.214
Notions of embedded rationality involve a privileging of universality, neces-

sity, and predictivity. ‘Chance’ becomes the enemy of a theory based on a
notion of embedded rationality. Megill argues that Marx’s adherence to this
notion explains his hostility to the market. Market-relations are defined by
chance and irregularity. Marx did not oppose the market, Megill argues,
because of any authoritarian tendencies on his part. He opposed the market
because it ‘is not, and cannot be, subsumed under laws’215 that are univer-
sal, necessary, and predictable. For Megill, this is Marx’s gravest error. His
uncritical acceptance of the notion of embedded rationality – a theme that
appears in his work from as early as his very first writings, in 1837 – inexo-
rably led Marx, he argues, to assume an unrealistically negative attitude
towards any form of the market.
Megill makes a powerful case that the interpretation of Marx as a ‘material-
ist’ fails to do justice to the nuances of his thought. As I have shown above,
Marx did not subject Hegel to critique simply for being an ‘idealist’. Marx
writes, ‘Hegel often gives a real presentation, embracing the thing itself,
within the speculative presentation’.216 And, although Marx often calls him-
self a materialist after 1844, he criticises the ‘one-sided’ and ‘abstract’ materi-
alism of the British empiricists as well as that of Feuerbach.217 Most important
of all, in the 1844 Manuscripts, he explicitly affirms the unity of idealism and
materialism in spelling out his own philosophical world-view.
Megill is also correct in saying that Marx opposes market- and exchange-
relations in his early writings, even if the critique therein does not serve (as
I have argued above) as the crux of his critique of capitalism. He finds the
market to be irrational, in that prices are determined by arbitrary vacillations
of supply and demand, instead of by the human relations of person to person.
As Marx writes in The Holy Family, ‘Value is determined at the beginning in
an apparently rational way, by the cost of production of an object and by
its social usefulness. Later it turns out that value is determined quite fortu-
itously and that it need not to bear any relation to either the cost of produc-
tion or social usefulness.’218 Marx is highly critical of arbitrary and fortuitous
214.â•‡ Megill 2002, pp. 8, 9.

215.â•‡ Megill 2002, p. 173.
217.â•‡ In the Theses on Feuerbach, he criticised ‘contemplative materialism’ and praised
idealism for developing ‘the active side of history’. See Marx 1976a, p. 6.
social relations such as the market because they represent ‘relations [which]
become independent of individuals’ and become ‘subordinated to general
class relations’.219 The market, as Marx sees it, is a product of the social divi-
sion of labour – which is what produces the very separation of individual and
general interests that he finds so offensive in capitalism.
There is also no question that Marx was committed to a notion of embed-
ded rationality. As I have shown, Marx contends that reality must embody
a ‘rationality’ that can enable the idea of freedom to be ultimately realised.
If reality lacks such rationality, even the most noble and inspired efforts at
social change would prove quixotic. However, the critical issue is, what is
the agent or subject within reality that embodies reason? What is the ‘internal
principle’ that guides reality towards the idea of freedom? Megill argues that,
for Marx, the internal principle is human intelligence as expressed in scientific
knowledge. He writes, ‘The driving force of history is clearly thought – more
specifically, it is the dimension of thought that is concerned with mastering
nature with a view to satisfying human beings’ needs’. This driving force is
‘intellectual labour’, labour that ‘involves the application of knowledge to
the productive process’.220 It propels history towards the idea of freedom by
developing the forces of production, which ultimately bring forth the social
revolution against capitalism.
Despite Megill’s close engagement with the writings of the young Marx
(his book only goes up to 1846), there are many problems with his claim
that Marx poses the intentional agent as science and technology. He writes,
‘Marx’s commitment to natural science, and to naturalism, was in place by
1844 at the latest’.221 He refers specifically to Marx’s embrace of ‘naturalism’
in the concluding essay of his Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844,
where Marx writes: ‘Here we see how consistent naturalism or humanism
is distinct from both idealism and materialism, and constitutes at the same
time the unifying truth of both. We see also how only naturalism is capable of
comprehending the action of world history’.222 Megill takes this to mean that
for Marx, ‘historyâ•›.â•›.â•›.â•›needs to be understood in the light of an understand-
ing of nature – and that means, in the light of natural science’.223 He fails to
mention, however, that the passage does not equate naturalism to ‘natural
science’. Instead, it equates naturalism to humanism. In spelling out this ‘posi-
tive humanism’, Marx speaks of humanity as ‘a suffering, conditioned, and

220.â•‡ Megill 2002, p. 2.
221.â•‡ Megill 2002, p. 13.
222.â•‡ Marx 1975r, p. 336.
223.â•‡ Megill 2002, p. 13.
88 • Chapter One
limited creature’. As Megill acknowledges on several occasions, rational-

ism and ‘natural science’ – at least as traditionally understood in the modern
Western tradition – tend to neglect feelings, suffering, and passions in favour
of universality, necessity, and predictability. However, by equating naturalism
to humanism, by which Marx means a philosophy that grasps ‘actual corporeal
humanity’ in all its sensuousness, his reference to ‘naturalism’ emphasises not
some predetermined pattern of predictability and certainty, but that which is
particular, contingent, and unpredictable.
Megill also fails to mention one of the most important statements in the
1844 Manuscripts – ‘to have one basis for science and another for life is a priori
a lie’.224 This is not an isolated statement. Much of Marx’s work consists of an
affirmation of contingency and sensuousness, as against the abstractive and
objectivist standpoint of modern science. He opposed capitalism because it is
based on a system of abstract labour, in which having predominates over being.
Capitalism’s necessarily abstractive character, Marx argues, prevents us from
seeing that ‘man is not merely a natural being: he is a human natural being.
That is to say, he is a being for himselfâ•›.â•›.â•›.â•›Neither nature objectively nor nature
subjectively is directly given in a form adequate to the human being’.225 He
opposes the one-sidedness of natural science, even while acknowledging its
contributions, because it prioritises universality, necessity and predictability
at the expense of human ‘sensuousness’ – its contingency and suffering. Instead
of running away from such contingency, Marx affirms it: ‘To be sensuous is to
suffer’.226
If Marx were the hyper-rationalist that Megill claims, it would be hard to
see how he could make such comments. Since the emphasis on contingency
and ‘actual sensuousness’ is a major theme throughout his early work, from
the doctoral dissertation to The German Ideology, this can hardly be considered
a theoretical inconsistency or an exception from his overall perspective. In
fact, one can draw the exact opposite conclusion that Megill does on the basis
of these and related passages. I would therefore argue that Marx opposed
capitalism because it forecloses the possibility of contingency and spontane-
ous development by positing abstract labour as the universal medium of social
interaction and reproduction.
Moreover, Marx presents the intentional agent for social transformation as
neither ‘science’ nor even human intelligence, but instead the proletariat. This
is in keeping with his criticism of subject-object inversion. Science and human
224.â•‡ Marx 1975r, p. 303.

225.â•‡ Marx 1975r, p. 337.
226.â•‡ Ibid.
intelligence are products of subjective human interaction that, under specific

social conditions, take on a life of their own and control the actions of the pro-
ducers. Marx could not pose science as the intentional agent at the same time
as maintaining his criticism of subject-predicate inversion – a criticism, as I
have shown, that permeates all of his early writings.227
Megill’s claim also makes it hard to understand the persistence of Marx’s
critique of Hegel. Marx attacks Hegel for posing disembodied thought as the
subject, instead of ‘actual, corporeal man’, Marx does not view actual cor-
poreal man as a mere embodiment of abstract rational categories. He views
actual corporeal man as the generator of such categories. When he speaks of
the proletariat being a ‘bearer’ of philosophy, he refers not to what he con-
siders Hegel’s dehumanised philosophy of consciousness but to ‘positive
humanism, beginning from itself’. Why would Marx spend so much time on
a critique of Hegel for claiming to comprehend contingent phenomena prior
to their actual empirical analysis if he was the hyper-rationalist that Megill
claims he was?
Of particular interest in this regard is that, in the ‘Critique of the Hegelian
Dialectic’, Marx takes issue with the very last sentence of Hegel’s Phenom-
enology, which states that without the unity of history and its ‘philosophical
comprehension’ found in ‘Absolute Knowledge’, all would be ‘lifeless, soli-
tary and alone [ohne den er das leblose Einsame wäre]’.228 Marx contends on the
contrary, ‘a being which is neither an object itself, nor has an objectâ•›.â•›.â•›.â•›out-
side itâ•›.â•›.â•›.â•›would exist solitary and alone’.229 A being can be considered alive
only if it does not embrace all of existence, only if objects and other people
exist on their own terms, independent of that being. Marx emphasises the irre-
ducibly contingent and limited character of human existence, in contrast to
what he sees as Hegel’s excessive rationalism. He criticises Hegel’s deifica-
tion of reason insofar as it turns actual people into expressions of cognitive
227.â•‡ This critical stance towards science was largely overlooked among Marx’s
‘orthodox’ followers, as especially seen in the huge influence that the thought of
Ferdinand Lassalle exerted among the first generation of post-Marx Marxists. Las-
salle’s argument that the vehicle of ‘science’ was not the proletariat, but rather the
radicalised bourgeois intelligentsia, proved enormously influential in the organisa-
tional theories of Karl Kautsky and V.I. Lenin in particular. See Dunayevskaya 2000,
p. 77: ‘Lassalle suffered from the illusion of the age: that science is “classless”. Such
an attitude made it natural for him to think that he represented “science and the
worker”, for science was surely incorporated in the intellectual, the leader. Marx, on
the other hand, rejected this “puerile stuff”.’
228.â•‡ Hegel 2008, p. 531.
229.â•‡ Marx 1975r, p. 337.
90 • Chapter One
categories abstracted from real life.230 It is to counter this defect in Hegel that
Marx calls himself a humanist.
At the same time, Marx’s critique of Hegel and his embrace of ‘positive
humanism, beginning from itself’ also emphasise the crucial importance of
natural existence. Marx denies that nature can be completely subsumed by
human subjective activity. Human activity is an extension and part of nature.
Humanity goes beyond nature insofar as its capacity for conscious, purposeful
activity enables it to create social existence. ‘Human nature’ is the capacity to
go beyond physical nature in creating an artificial environment. Human activ-
ity therefore contains the potential of overcoming natural necessity. However,
this does not mean that nature can ever become an irrelevant or totally sub-
ordinate moment in our existence, since humanity is both a ‘natural being’
and ‘a being for himself’.231 Marx rejects any perspective that totally dissolves
nature into human subjective activity on the grounds that ‘a being which is
neither an object itself, nor has an objectâ•›.â•›.â•›.â•›outside itâ•›.â•›.â•›.â•›would exist solitary
and alone’.232 This has crucial implications for conceiving of a postcapitalist
society. Since humanity is a ‘natural being’, even as it is a ‘being for himself’,233
nature must not be viewed in terms of an exteriority to be annulled. An irre-
ducible gap exists between human praxis and the natural world, no matter
how much humanity strives to overcome it, and this gap needs to be accepted
and celebrated. Capitalism denies this, since it reduces everything – including
the natural world – to having and consumption. Natural limits are ignored for
the sake of gratifying one human need at the expense of all others. By treating
nature as a person apart that is to be possessed, consumed, and destroyed for
the sake of augmenting value, capitalism indeed leaves us with a world that
is ‘lifeless, solitary, and alone’.
Marx, therefore, does not project an abstract humanism that ignores natural
limits and realities. In insisting that nature cannot be separated from human
nature, he is implying that one cannot be degraded for the sake of the other.
This is because humanity, like all natural beings, ‘has its nature outside itself’.234
I belong not just to me, and not just to the objects that I claim belong to me, for
230.â•‡ That Marx sharply criticises the conclusion of Hegel’s Phenomenology, and
especially his concept of ‘Absolute Knowledge’ in 1844 does not mean that it is his last
word on the subject. As Dunayevskaya argues, Marx returns to Hegel’s Absolutes in
the course of working on Capital, in delineating the ‘absolute law of capitalist accumula-
tion’. See Dunayevskaya 2002 and 2003 for an appreciative re-reading of the conclusion
of Hegel’s Phenomenology in light of the realities of the twentieth century.
231.â•‡ Marx 1975r, p. 337.
232.â•‡ Ibid.
233.â•‡ Ibid.
234.â•‡ Ibid.
I also belong to the objective, natural world. Sensuous beings like ourselves
are bound to suffer, since to be sensuous is to ‘have sensuous objects outside
oneself’. But this ‘suffering’ is not the suffering of exploitation, discrimina-
tion, and alienation. It is the ‘suffering’ involved in accepting and celebrating
the fact that, like all natural beings, we too are limited and contingent.
While Marx does not explicitly spell out his comments on nature in terms
of what he envisages for life after capitalism, they stand at quite a distance
from the rationalist scientism that Megill ascribes to him. Megill’s reading of
Marx makes it difficult to understand why he poses naturalism and humanism
as interchangeable terms. On the other hand, thinking out the ramifications of
their interchangeability is a crucial part of developing an ecological critique of
capitalism that affirms and respects natural limits.
Marx’s emphasis on the inseparability of ‘naturalism’ and ‘humanism’ also
speaks to a criticism often made of his early writings – namely, that he held a
perfectionist view of human nature. Leszek Kolakowski argues in his major
study of Marxism that Marx envisages a postcapitalist society as ‘a society of
perfect unity, in which all human aspirations would be fulfilled, and all val-
ues reconciled’.235 Kolakowski views this radical utopianism as a major defect,
since it led ‘Marxist’ régimes of the twentieth century to attempt to forcefully
impose a degree of social transformation that was impossible to actualise.
However, we again need to keep in mind that Marx’s emphasis on contin-
gency and sensuousness leads him to write, ‘to be sensuous is to suffer’. The
phrase appears several times in the 1844 Manuscripts. Humanity, he contends,
as a sensuous being is a limited being, and a limited being is a suffering being.
Marx does not explicitly say why suffering is an inevitable part of the human
condition, but it appears related to our ability to envisage the transgression of
finite limits that our sensuous existence prevents us from actualising. In any
case, Marx’s emphasis on achieving a ‘totality of manifestations of life’ does
not imply a life free of pain, contradiction, and suffering. It only implies a life
in which we are able to come to terms with such afflictions, once we are no
longer alienated from ourselves.
If Marx did not oppose the market because he privileged scientific neces-
sity and predictability above all else, why then did he criticise it? The answer
is that the market does not meet the three normative criteria by which he
measures reality in his early writings. These three normative criteria, which I
have discussed above, are opposition to subject-predicate inversion, opposi-
tion to treating oneself and others as mere means to an end, and Marx’s view
that ‘all emancipation is a reduction of the human world and relationships to
235.â•‡ Kolakowski 1978, p. 523.

92 • Chapter One
man himself’. The market controls the fate of the producer by setting prices
in a way that has little or nothing to do with their actual value or the subjec-
tive activity by which the products are created. The products come to domi-
nate the producer. The producer’s activity becomes a mere means to serve the
product, rather than vice versa – because the nature of the activity that creates
the product in the first place becomes a mere means to an end, instead of an
end in itself. The market is characterised – at least once there is generalised com-
modity-exchange – by depersonalised object-object relations, instead of human
relations.
It needs to be emphasised, however, that the critique of the market is not the
pons asini of Marx’s critique of capitalism. Marx sees the market, like private
property, as the result of alienated labour, not its cause. Moreover, his early
writings contain far more discussion of private property than the market; his
comments about the latter are far from extensive or systematic. In contrast
to how Marx was understood by much of twentieth-century ‘Marxism’, our
exploration indicates that his real object of critique was not the market or pri-
vate property, but rather the social relations that underpin them.
Chapter Two
The Conception of a Postcapitalist Society in the
Drafts of Capital
The ‘first draft’ of Capital: The Poverty of

Philosophy (1847)
The process by which Marx composed his greatest
theoretical work, Capital, is long and complicated.
As early as 1845, Marx had sketched out plans to
write a two-volume work on economics that he pro-
visionally entitled A Critique of Politics and Political
Economy. After he temporarily put aside this work,
in order to concentrate on polemical writings like
The Holy Family and The German Ideology, he returned
to a direct study of economics in the late 1840s. How-
ever, the first volume of what became Capital was
not completed until 1867, after Marx made numer-
ous changes to both the form and content of his pro-
jected book. Marx composed a considerable number
of drafts of Capital in the two decades preceding its
publication in 1867, and they have been the subject
of prolonged and detailed examination and debate
by a large number of scholars and researchers on
Marx’s work over the past several decades.1
Most commentators on Marx have seen the Grun-
drisse, composed in 1857–8, as the first draft of Capi-
tal. There are grounds for considering that Marx’s
initial conceptual outline of what later became Capi-
tal began much earlier, however, in 1847 with his
1.â•‡ See especially Rosdolsky 1968, Uchida 1988, Heinrich 1989, Dussel 2000, Bidet
2009, Musto (ed.) 2008, Fineschi 2009, and Bellofiore and Fineschi (eds.) 2009.
94 • Chapter Two
The Poverty of Philosophy and the associated manuscript on ‘Wages’. These

were composed in a period when Marx, having completed his criticism of the
young Hegelians, felt the need to present to the public a positive exposition
of his economic theories. Near the end of his life (in 1880) he wrote that The
Poverty of Philosophy ‘contains the seeds of the theory developed after twenty
years’ work in Capital’.2 A considerable number of critical concepts that
became central to Capital – such as surplus-value (although the phrase itself
does not explicitly appear in The Poverty of Philosophy), the relation between
production and distribution, the ‘reserve-army of labour’, the distribution of
the elements of production, and the distinction between actual labour-time
and socially-necessary labour-time – first appear in his writings of 1847.
For this reason, I will follow the approach taken by Samuel Hollander’s
recent study of Marx’s economic theory,3 by considering The Poverty of Phi-
losophy and related manuscripts composed in 1847 as the ‘first draft’ of what
became Capital. The Grundrisse will be treated as the second draft, and the
manuscript of 1861–3 as the third.4
The Poverty of Philosophy (1847) represents Marx’s first published work on
economics and marked a crucial step in the two-decades long process that led
to the publication of his greatest work, Capital. Marx had, of course, written
extensively on political economy prior to The Poverty of Philosophy, as seen in
his Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844 and The German Ideology.
However, neither of these was published until long after his death. Moreover,
a number of crucial concepts that later became central to Capital and that are
not found in either the 1844 Manuscripts or the German Ideology make their first
appearance in The Poverty of Philosophy.5
The purpose of The Poverty of Philosophy was to take issue with Pierre-Joseph
Proudhon’s The Philosophy of Poverty (1846), which sought to apply the insights
of David Ricardo’s economic theory in developing a criticism of the inequities
of modern capitalism. Proudhon, as Marx shows, was a rather schematic and
eclectic thinker whose arguments are not always internally coherent. Never-
2.â•‡ See Marx 1989g, p. 326. This first appeared as a letter to L’Egalité of 7 April 1880.
Marx also writes that The Poverty of Philosophy ‘might thus serve as an introduction
to the study of Capital’.
3.â•‡ See Hollander 2008, pp. 194–5.
4.â•‡ Marx also composed what can be considered a fourth draft of Capital, in 1863–5.
Except for its sixth chapter, ‘Results of the Immediate Process of Production’, it has
not been found.
5.â•‡ The Poverty of Philosophy was written and published in French, and a German
edition did not appear until after Marx’s death, in 1885. The book was not republished
in Marx’s lifetime, although several chapters did appear in serialised form in several
socialist publications between 1872 and 1875. Marx had also studied the political
economists, first in French, as seen in MEGA2 IV/3.
The Conception of a Postcapitalist Society • 95
theless, Proudhon consistently counterposed the ‘rationality’ of Ricardo’s

principle of the determination of value6 by labour-time to capitalism’s ‘irra-
tional’ and disorganised process of exchange. Proudhon argued that because
labour is the source of all value, the costs of production represent ‘constituted
value’ – the relative amount of labour-time that it takes to produce a given
commodity. This principle of value-determination, he argued, is hidden and
distorted by the exchange-process, in which workers are paid on the basis
of a portion of the price of the commodity, instead of upon the value of their
labour. Proudhon therefore proposed altering the exchange-relations of capi-
talism by paying workers a ‘fair’ equivalent of the value of their labour in the
form of labour-tokens or time-chits. Workers would be paid not in money –
which Proudhon saw as a wholly arbitrary and unnatural phenomenon – but,
instead, in tokens or vouchers that express the amount of time the labourer
works in a given period. These tokens would then be exchanged for an equiv-
alent of goods and services produced in the same amount of time (or which
have the same ‘value’).
Marx is scathingly critical of Proudhon’s position, on the grounds that it
utilises the central principle of capitalist production – the determination of
value by labour-time – as the defining feature of a ‘just’ or non-capitalist soci-
ety. Whereas Proudhon holds that the inequities of capitalism result from an
inadequate or incomplete application of the determination of value by labour-
time, Marx holds that this is the very basis of its inequalities: ‘It will think it
very naïve that M. Proudhon should give as a “revolutionary theory of the
future” what Ricardo expounded scientifically as the theory of present-day
society, of bourgeois society, and that he should thus take for the solution
of the antimony between utility and exchange value what Ricardo and his
school presented long before him as the scientific formula of one single side
of this antimony, that of exchange value’.7
Ricardo, Marx notes, ‘shows us the real movement of bourgeois produc-
tion, which constitutes value’. Proudhon leaves ‘this real movement out of
account’ and seeks the ‘reorganization of the world on a would-be new for-
mula, which formula is no more than the theoretical expression of the real
movement which exists and which is so well described by Ricardo’. Hence,
‘Ricardo takes present-day society as his starting point to demonstrate to us
6.â•‡ In The Poverty and Philosophy (1847), the Grundrisse (1858), the Contribution to the
Critique of Political Economy (1859), and the 1861–3 draft of Capital Marx uses the terms
‘value’ and ‘exchange-value’ more or less interchangeably. It is not until the second
German edition of Volume I of Capital in 1872 that he explicitly distinguishes between
them by referring to exchange-value as the value-form or form of appearance of value.
This will be discussed further in Chapter Three, below.
7.â•‡ Marx 1976b, p. 121.
96 • Chapter Two
how it constitutes value – M. Proudhon takes constituted value as his starting

point to constitute a new world with the aid of this value’.8
In sum, Marx vigorously objects to applying categories that are specific to
capitalism – such as the determination of value by labour-time – to conceptu-
alising the kind of society that should replace it.
Nowhere in the text does Marx suggest that Proudhon erred by discussing
a future organisation of society per se. Instead, he takes issue with the content
of Proudhon’s discussion – that he conceives of a future society drawn from
the basis of principles of capitalism. The Poverty of Philosophy indicates that
Marx is not averse to discussing the future, since his differences with Proud-
hon’s understanding of a future non-capitalist society grounds his entire cri-
tique. Moreover, the book also contains a detailed critique of English socialists
(such as John Bray) for importing, along similar lines as Proudhon, categories
specific to bourgeois society into his envisagement of a ‘socialist’ alternative.
Bray had written several influential works in the 1830s arguing for ‘equitable
labour exchange bazaars’. A number of these were set up by utopian social-
ists in the 1830s in order to organise commodity-exchange without a capitalist
intermediary. Marx writes of Bray, ‘In a purified individual exchange, freed
from all the elements of antagonism he finds in it, he sees an “egalitarian”
relation which he would like to see society adopt’.9 Marx argues that almost
all the early English socialists – Thomas Hodgskin, William Thompson, T.R.
Edmunds, as well as Bray – ‘have, at different periods, proposed the equali-
tarian application of the Ricardian theory’.10 He will further develop his criti-
cism of such positions throughout his two decades of work on Capital.
Why was Marx opposed to the ‘egalitarian’ application of Ricardo’s theory?
The main reason is that it rests upon a fundamental theoretical error – the
conflation of actual labour-time with socially-necessary labour-time. Marx
agrees with Ricardo that labour is the source of all value. However, he does
not agree that value expresses the actual number of hours of labour performed
by the worker. If value were based on the actual hours of labour, commodi-
ties that take longer to produce would have a greater value. Since capitalism
is based on augmenting value, that would mean that capitalists would try to
get workers to work slower rather than faster. This is, of course, clearly not
the case. The reason, Marx argues, is that ‘Value is never constituted all alone.
It is constituted, not by the time needed to produce it all alone, but in rela-
tion to the quota of each and every other product which can be created in the
â•‡ 8.â•‡ Marx 1976b, pp. 123–4.

â•‡ 9.â•‡ Marx 1976b, p. 144.
10.â•‡ Marx 1976b, p. 138.
same time’.11 Value is not determined by the actual amount of time employed
to create a commodity; it is determined by the average amount of necessary
labour-time needed to create it. If a worker in Detroit assembles an automo-
bile in 24 hours while one in South Korea assembles a similar model in only
16 hours, the extra eight hours of labour performed by the worker in Detroit
creates no value. ‘What determines value is not the time taken to produce a
thing, but the minimum time it could possibly be produced in, and this mini-
mum is ascertained by competition’.12
In other words, the value of the commodity is not determined by actual
labour-time but by simple or equalised labour-time. Labour is equalised,
or reduced to an abstract equivalent, through the ‘subordination of man to
machine or by the extreme division of labour’. Marx writes of how ‘The pen-
dulum of the clock has become as accurate a measure of the relative activity of
two workers as it is of the speed of two locomotives’.13 As competition reveals
the minimum-amount of labour-time necessary, on average, to create a given
commodity, the workers are forced to produce the commodity in that time
unit, irrespective of their human needs or bodily capacities. Their labour-time
takes the form of an abstract equivalent. This abstract equivalent is the source
and substance of value. In capitalism, ‘Time is everything, man is nothing; he
is, at most, time’s carcass. Quality no longer matters. Quantity decides every-
thing; hour for hour, day by day’.14
The value of the commodity is therefore determined by labour-time only
to the extent that labour has been subsumed by an abstract, alienating activ-
ity. The formula adopted by Proudhon and the English socialists – the deter-
mination of value of labour-time – cannot serve as the basis of a new society,
because it is the principle that governs the alienation of the labourer. Marx
argues, ‘It is upon this equality, already realised in automatic labour, that
M. Proudhon wields his smoothing-plane of “equalisation”, which he means
to establish universally in “time to come”!’15
Of course, Proudhon, like the English socialists, opposed the exploitation
of labour. They viewed themselves as champions of the workers, and, in
a sense, they were since they wanted them to obtain a ‘fair’ share of social
wealth. Yet, in failing to distinguish between actual labour-time and socially-
necessary labour-time, they ended up defining the new society on the basis of
11.â•‡ Marx 1976b, p. 147.

12.â•‡ Marx 1976b, p. 136. It is important to note that this social average is ascertained
by competition, not created by it. Marx sees competitive pressures as a function of the
drive to augment value, instead of vice-versa.
13.â•‡ Marx 1976b, p. 127.
14.â•‡ Ibid.
15.â•‡ Ibid.
98 • Chapter Two
the cardinal principle of capitalism. Marx concludes, ‘After all, the determina-
tion of value by labour time – the formula M. Proudhon gives us as the regen-
erating formula of the future – is therefore merely the scientific expression of
the economic relations of present-day society, as was clearly and precisely
demonstrated by Ricardo long before M. Proudhon’.16 Ideas have their own
logic, independent of the intentions and political agendas that may inspire
them.
Marx also shows that Proudhon confuses the value of the commodity with
the value of labour. To Proudhon, the value of the commodity is equivalent to
the value of labour that creates it. On these grounds, he argues that there is no
reason why workers should not receive the same value in wages (computed
in labour-tokens or time-chits) as the value of the product. The exchange-
relation should be equalised by eliminating the class of capitalists, usurers,
and middlemen that make off with a portion of the workers’ value. Marx
shows that such calls for equal exchange are based on an erroneous conflation
of the value of labour with the value of the commodity: ‘It is going against
economic facts to determine the relative value of commodities by the value
of labour. It is moving in a vicious circle, it is to determine relative value by a
relative value which itself needs to be determined’.17
In sum, instead of opposing the ‘equalisation’ that has living labour become
dominated by an abstraction, Proudhon dominated by an abstraction, Proud-
hon endorses it as a principle of equality. He accepts the equalisation of labour
as a given in order to derive from it a principle of equal exchange. He has
overlooked the contradictions inherent in capitalist production while seeking
a modification in the form and mechanism of exchange-relations.
For Marx, in contrast, the problem of capitalism is not that it distributes
value in an unequal manner in contradistinction to the principle of equali-
sation involved in its system of production. Instead, Marx argues that the
problem of capitalism, and the reason for its unequal forms of exchange, is
the equalising tendencies of value-production itself. All labour in capitalism
is dominated by an abstraction, labour in general, as a result of the ‘collisions
between the worker and the employer who sought at all costs to depreciate
the workers’ specialized ability’.18 The unequal distribution of wealth, Marx
contends, is a consequence of a class-relationship in which concrete labour is
governed by an equal standard – simple, general labour. There is no value-
production without the ‘equalisation’ of labour – without living labour being
dominated by a uniform abstraction. Proudhon’s position is ‘accepting the
16.â•‡ Marx 1976b, p. 138.

17.â•‡ Marx 1976b, p. 128.
18.â•‡ Marx 1976b, p. 188.
present state of affairs; it is, in short, making an apologyâ•›.â•›.â•›.â•›for a society with-

out understanding it’.19
Here, in Marx’s first public discussion of his economic theory, he not only
directly discusses the nature of a postcapitalist society; in doing so, he makes
it clear that value-production is incompatible with socialism.
There is, however, an important difference between Proudhon’s position and
those of the English utopian socialists, even though their theoretical views rest
on similar premises. While Proudhon embraces payment according to labour-
time as the governing principle of ‘socialism’, Marx writes that Bray ‘proposes
merely measures which he thinks good for a period of transition between
existing society and a community regime’.20 Does Marx therefore endorse an
alteration of exchange-relations based on paying workers the value of their
labour as a transitional form that could lead to a new society? A close reading
of The Poverty of Philosophy suggests that the answer is in the negative. Marx
does not think that production-relations can be altered by tinkering with the
form in which products are exchanged; instead, he argues that alterations in
the form of exchange follow from the transformation of relations of produc-
tion: ‘In general, the form of exchange of products corresponds to the form of
production. Change the latter, and the former will change in consequence’.21
Moreover, he indicates that maintaining an exchange of equivalents based on
value-production undermines the effort to effect a fundamental transforma-
tion in production-relations. He writes, ‘Thus, if all the members of society are
supposed to be immediate workers, the exchange of equal quantities or hours
of labour is possible only on condition that the number of hours to be spent on
material production is agreed on beforehand. But such an agreement negates
individual exchange’.22
Marx is here envisaging a situation in which a social average that oper-
ates behind the workers’ backs – socially-necessary labour-time – no longer
dictates the amount of time that the worker must spend producing a given
product. Instead, the amount of time will be ‘agreed on beforehand’ by the
associated producers. Material production is now determined by the pro-
ducers’ conscious decisions, instead of by the autonomous force of value-
production. Such a situation ‘negates individual exchange’ in that products
are not exchanged based on the amount of labour-time embodied in them.
Marx appears to be unequivocal on this point: ‘Either you want the correct
proportions of past centuries with present-day means of production, in which
19.â•‡ Marx 1976b, p. 134.

20.â•‡ Marx 1976b, p. 142.
21.â•‡ Marx 1976b, p. 143.
22.â•‡ Ibid.
100 • Chapter Two
case you are both reactionary and utopian. Or you want progress without
anarchy: in which case, in order to preserve the productive forces, you must
abandon individual exchange’.23
Hence, although Marx notes that Bray upholds the principle of the deter-
mination of value by labour-time as a transitional form to a new society rather
than the governing principle of socialism itself, he remains sharply critical of
Bray’s perspective. He is especially critical of Bray for proposing a national
savings-bank, established by the government, to regulate the distribution of
labour-tokens or time-chits. Marx terms this ‘the golden chain by which the
government holds a large part of the working class. The workers themselves
thus give into the hands of their enemies the weapons to preserve the exist-
ing organization of society which subjugates them’.24 He sums up his critique
thusly:
Mr. Bray does not see that this egalitarian relation, this corrective ideal that
he would like to apply to the world, is itself nothing but the reflection of
the actual world; and that therefore it is totally impossible to reconstitute
society on the basis of what is merely an embellished shadow of it. In
proportion as this shadow takes on substance again, we perceive that this
substance, far from being the transfiguration dreamt of, is the actual body
of the existing society.25
There is, therefore – at least for Marx – no room for a ‘transition’ to socialism
based on the governing principles of the old society. He conceives of a sharper
break between capitalism and the transition to socialism than that advocated
by its neo-Ricardian socialist critics. The manner in which he further develops
this argument emerges as one of the central themes in his subsequent drafts
of what will eventually become Volume I of Capital.
The ‘second draft’ of Capital: the Grundrisse (1858)

The Grundrisse, Marx’s first book-length draft of Capital26 (although it can be
considered the ‘second draft’ in light of his writings of 1847), is a remark-
23.â•‡ Marx 1976b, p. 138.

24.â•‡ Marx 1976d, p. 427. The manuscript on ‘Wages’, written in December 1847, is
part of his studies associated with his initial efforts to work out a critique of political
economy and is closely connected with the content of The Poverty of Philosophy.
25.â•‡ Marx 1976b, p. 144.
26.â•‡ Marx did not provide a title for the work; it was entitled the Grundrisse or
‘rough draft’ by its editors. Different as it is from Capital in many respects, it covers
the subject-matter that is contained in all three volumes of what eventually became
Capital.
able work of over eight hundred pages that contains a wealth of important
philosophical insights. Written in 1857–8 but not published until 1939, it has
sparked numerous re-examinations and reconsiderations of Marx’s contribu-
tion as a whole since it became widely available in the 1970s.27
What is especially striking about the Grundrisse is its wealth of discus-
sion of the alternative to capitalism. Indeed, it can be argued that no sin-
gle work of Marx discusses a future postcapitalist society as directly or as
comprehensively.
One reason for this is that the Grundrisse begins with a lengthy criticism of
the concept of a postcapitalist society promoted by French and English social-
ists of the time, Proudhon especially. The latter’s sway over the labour and
socialist movements had not receded by 1857–8; instead, in many respects, his
ideas had become more influential than ever. Marx was gravely concerned
about this and devoted considerable space in the Grundrisse to distinguish-
ing Proudhon’s concept of a new society from his own. As Marx moves on to
deal with other issues in the rest of the work – such as the difference between
indirectly and directly social labour, the contradiction between necessary and
surplus labour-time, and the phases that characterise human development –
he discusses the contours of a postcapitalist society to an extent not found in
many of his other works.
At the same time, much of the Grundrisse’s critique of Proudhon and other
socialists returns to, and further develops, the points Marx had earlier formu-
lated in 1847 in The Poverty of Philosophy. Marx begins the first chapter of the
Grundrisse,28 which deals with money, with a critique of Louis Alfred Dari-
mon, a leading French follower of Proudhon who advocated a reform of the
banking system through the creation of a currency based on denominations
of labour-time. Marx writes,
27.â•‡ Parts of the Grundrisse, such as the fragment ‘Bastiat and Carey’ and its ‘Intro-
duction’, were published in 1902–4 in Die Neue Zeit, edited by Karl Kautsky. However,
the work did not appear in full until 1939–41, when the Marx-Engels-Lenin Institute in
Moscow published it in two volumes, in German. Very few copies of this edition ever
reached the Western world and the work was not widely known until the 1960s. The
first full English translation appeared in 1973. See Marx 1973. I am here making use
of the more recent translation published in the late 1980s and early 1990s, contained
in Volumes 28 and 29 of the Marx-Engels Collected Works.
28.â•‡ Aside from the ‘Introduction’ and the fragment on ‘Bastiat and Carey’
(which deals with the historical specificity of capitalism in the USA), the original
manuscript contains only two chapters, with no subheadings or divisions into parts.
‘The Chapter on Money’ is about 150 pages long, while ‘The Chapter on Capital’
comes to over 650 pages. Marx referred to the ‘shapelessness’ of the manuscript in his
correspondence.
102 • Chapter Two
The general question is: is it possible to revolutionize the existing relations

of production and the corresponding relations of distribution by means of
changes in the instrument of circulation – changes in the organization of
circulation? A further question: can such a transformation of circulation be
accomplished without touching the existing relations of production and the
social relations based on them?29
Darimon, like Proudhon and many of the English socialists of the time,
thought that it was possible to ‘revolutionise’ relations of production through
an alteration of the medium of exchange. Why, Darimon asks, do capitalists
accumulate so much wealth, given that labour is the source of all value?
The reason, he argues, is the ‘irrational’ nature of the medium of exchange,
money, which alters and distorts the determination of value by labour-
time. Commodities are not sold at their value but, instead, at their price, as
denominated in money. The ‘unregulated’ nature of the medium of circula-
tion, contends Darimon, is the lever that enables capitalists to ‘unfairly’ pay
workers less than the value of their labour. He argues that if commodities
were directly sold at their ‘true value’, according to the actual amount of
labour-time that it takes to produce them – instead of indirectly through the
medium of money – the very existence of the capitalist would become super-
fluous. Hence, altering the medium of circulation would abolish class-society.
To achieve this, Darimon proposed creating a national bank to regulate the
medium of circulation by replacing money with gold-tokens representing
the amount of labour-time that workers perform in producing a given set
of commodities.30
Marx engages in a lengthy and complex criticism of Darimon’s position.
Much of it is based on his understanding of ‘the inner connection between the
relations of production, distribution, and circulation’,31 as spelled out in the
‘Introduction’ to the Grundrisse. He there takes issue with such political econ-
omists as John Stuart Mill for viewing relations of production as governed by
‘eternal natural laws independent of history’.32 Mill’s view that production-
relations adhere to eternal natural laws led him to argue that the proper object
of political economy, which deals with specific historical formations, is the
sphere of distribution. Marx objects to this on the grounds that ‘The struc-
29.â•‡ Marx 1986a, p. 60.

30.â•‡ Darimon’s proposal is somewhat different from that of the English socialists
whom Marx also addresses in his critique, in that the latter propose paper-tokens
or vouchers representing actual labour-time whereas Darimon prefers gold labour-
tokens. As Marx sees it, however, both positions rest upon the same fundamental
(and mistaken) set of premises.
31.â•‡ Marx 1986a, p. 61.
32.â•‡ Marx 1986a, p. 25.
ture of distribution is entirely determined by the structure of production’.33

He develops this by directly employing the central Hegelian categories of
Universal, Particular, and Individual.34 Production, he writes, is the determi-
nant category of capitalist society and therefore represents the Hegelian con-
cept of the Universal. Consumption – without which production cannot be
realised – corresponds to the Hegelian category of the Individual. Production
and consumption are opposites and non-identical, but one cannot exist with-
out the other: they co-exist in a state of negative self-relation. Distribution and
exchange is the medium by which the Universal is individualised; it corre-
sponds to the Hegelian concept of the Particular. ‘Production, distribution and
exchange, and consumption thus form a proper syllogism’.35 Distribution or
exchange is not an independent sphere in its own right. It does not govern, it
is governed; it does not determine, it is determined; it is a mediatory moment
between production and consumption.36 This serves as the philosophical basis
of his criticism of Darimon’s economic theories.
Marx contends that Darimon’s error lies in advocating a change in the form
of wage-labour, instead of calling for the abolition of wage-labour itself. He
wants to change the manner in which labour is remunerated, while leaving
its commodification intact, since workers are to be paid in a labour-voucher,
instead of in money. Yet this retains the need for a universal equivalent with which
labour can be bought and sold.
In passages that recall his earlier discussion in The Poverty of Philosophy,
Marx contends that Darimon dethrones money from its special role as uni-
versal equivalent by proposing that the quantity of labour-time assume that
particular role. This is like saying ‘Let the Papacy remain, but make everyone
Pope. Do away with money by turning every commodity into money and
endowing it with the specific properties of money’.37 In the name of getting
rid of the prevailing universal equivalent, money, every product of labour (as
computed in labour-time) gets placed in the position of serving as the uni-
versal equivalent. This completely overlooks what allows a universal equivalent to
exist in the first place. One product of labour can be exchanged for all products
of labour only if labour itself is dominated by an abstraction, subsumed by
an abstract universal – abstract labour. Darimon and Proudhon’s plan for the
33.â•‡ Marx 1986a, p. 32.

34.â•‡ See Hegel 1979a, pp. 664–704.
35.â•‡ Marx 1986a, p. 27.
36.â•‡ Another way to state this is to say that production and consumption represent
a unity of opposites mediated by way of distribution and exchange. As Marx puts
it, ‘This identity of production and consumption amounts to Spinoza’s proposition:
determinatio est negatio’. See Marx 1986a, p. 28.
37.â•‡ Marx 1986a, p. 65.
104 • Chapter Two
reform of money not only fails to transform relations of production in which

labour is dominated by an abstraction, but it pushes matters further in that
very direction by bestowing universal equivalency upon all commodities.
Marx is not simply arguing that their approach would fail to improve mat-
ters. He indicates that it would actually make matters worse. He first asks if it is
worthwhile to tinker with the form of money or the market ‘without abolish-
ing the production relation itself which is expressed in the category of money;
and whether it is not then necessarily a self-defeating effort to overcome the
essential conditions of relationship by effecting a formal modification within
it’.38 Marx suggests this would be a waste of time, since it would create an
even greater despotism than what exists under traditional market-capitalism:
‘The inconveniences resulting from the existence of a special instrument of
exchange, of a special and yet general equivalent, are bound to reproduce
themselves (if in different ways) in every form’ – even if it may ‘entail fewer
inconveniences than another’.39
Ironically, what Marx here subjects to critique is a striking anticipation
of what passed for ‘Marxism’ in many ‘socialist’ and ‘communist’ régimes
of the twentieth century. Such régimes eliminated private property and the
‘free market’ by bringing the process of distribution and circulation under
the control of the state. But they did little or nothing to transform production-
relations. Concrete labour was still reduced to a monotonous, routinised
activity through the dominance of abstract labour. Abstract labour continued
to serve as the substance of value. Marx’s discussion in the Grundrisse sug-
gests that a planned economy – so long as there is no fundamental change in
relations of production – may avoid some of the inconveniences of traditional
market-capitalism, but the problems end up becoming reproduced on another
level. For instance, instead of a surplus of products that cannot be consumed
(which characterises traditional capitalism), there is a shortage of products
that cannot be produced (which characterised statist ‘socialism’). Imbalances
between production and consumption are bound to show up, one way or
another, so long as the relations of production are not transformed, precisely
because value-production rests on a non-identity or non-equivalence between
production and consumption. Marx puts the matter as follows: ‘The money
system in its present form can be completely regulated – all the evils deplored
by Darimon abolished – without the abandonment of the present social basis:
indeed, while its contradictions, its antagonisms, the conflict of classes, etc.
actually reach a higher degree’.40
38.â•‡ Marx 1986a, p. 61.

39.â•‡ Marx 1986a, p. 65.
40.â•‡ Marx 1986a, p. 71.
One reason that Darimon and Proudhon objected so strenuously to money

as the medium of exchange is that gold and silver tend to appreciate in value
relative to other commodities in periods of economic crisis. Since the wealth-
ier classes tend to possess greater amount of precious metals and money than
workers, the former’s income tends to rise even as the latter falls. Organis-
ing exchange through a national banking system based on labour-vouchers,
Darimon claimed, would put an end to such inequities. Marx counters that
he overlooks the other side of the issue – namely, that gold and silver tend to
depreciate relative to other commodities in periods of economic growth. Marx
does not deny that prices of commodities wildly fluctuate in periods of eco-
nomic growth and crisis, and often to the detriment of the workers. Yet he
does not agree with Darimon’s proposed solution. Does he have a solution of
his own to offer? I would argue that he does. He writes,
Formulated in this way, the riddle would have solved itself at once: abolish
the rise and fall in prices. That means, do away with prices. That, in turn,
means abolishing exchange value, which, in its turn, requires the abolition
of the system of exchange corresponding to the bourgeois organization of
society. This last entails the problem of revolutionizing bourgeois society
economically. Then it would have become evident from the start that the
evils of bourgeois society cannot be remedied by banal ‘transformations’
or the establishment of a rational ‘money system’.41
Marx here endorses efforts to eliminate the deleterious impact of price-fluc-

tuations on the agents of production. He explicitly refers to the ‘abolition’ of
prices and exchange-value.
But why does he so sharply criticise the Proudhonists for proposing altera-
tions in the sphere of exchange? The reason is that the abolition of prices and
exchange-value presupposes a revolutionary transformation of the underly-
ing relations of production. What Marx means by ‘revolutionizing bourgeois
society economically’ is a radical transformation of production-relations that
would create correspondingly new relations of distribution. He argues that tak-
ing the contrary approach, by focusing first of all on transforming exchange-
relations, not only leaves production-relations intact but also fails to resolve
the problems of exchange that so concern the Proudhonists in the first place.
Marx illustrates this by further developing the distinction posed in The Pov-
erty of Philosophy between actual labour-time and socially-necessary labour-
time. He argues, ‘Not the labour time incorporated in [previous] output, but
41.â•‡ Marx 1986a, p. 72.

106 • Chapter Two
the currently necessary labour time determines value’.42 Proudhon and his
followers conflate the two. As a result, they fail to see that their ‘solution’ –
reorganising exchange-relations to conform to the determination of value
by labour-time – would do nothing to correct the deleterious impact of the
depreciation of the medium of exchange. Marx writes, ‘According to the gen-
eral economic law that production costs fall continually, that living labour
becomes more and more productive, and that the labour time objectified in
products therefore continually depreciates, constant depreciation would be
the inevitable fate of this gold labour money’.43
Darimon sees only the appreciation of gold and silver during an economic
crisis. Yet Darimon does not realise that his labour-money will tend to depreci-
ate in value, since the average amount of labour-time necessary to produce a
given commodity tends to fall. The labour-tokens are bound to depreciate as
the mode of production undergoes innovation under the pressure of competi-
tion. In the long run, workers would have less ability to ‘buy back’ the value
of their product than in a traditional monetary economy. Marx notes that this
situation would in no way be altered if workers were paid in paper-vouchers
(as advocated by many English and French socialists of the time), instead of
in gold or silver labour-money: ‘The labour time embodied in the paper itself
would be of as little account as the paper value of banknotes. The one would
simply be a representative of labour hours, as the other is of gold or silver’.44
Marx shows that all of these efforts to address social problems by tinkering
with the form of remuneration or exchange rest on the illusion that the distinc-
tion between value and price is arbitrary and unnecessary. The French – and
many English – socialists considered value to be real and necessary, since it is
determined by the quantity of labour-time spent in producing an object. They
considered price to be fictive and unnecessary, since it is determined by the
whim of supply and demand. They therefore wanted to replace commodity-
prices with labour-tokens that express the ‘real’ value of the product.
Marx counters that price cannot be treated as a mere nominal expression
of value. Value must diverge from price because the value of the commodity
is not determined by the actual number of hours engaged in producing the
commodity, but only by the average amount of time that is socially necessary
for doing so.45 This average is established behind the backs of the producers
42.â•‡ Marx 1986a, p. 73.

43.â•‡ Ibid.
44.â•‡ Ibid.
45.â•‡ See Marx 1986a, p. 75: ‘Price, therefore, differs from value, not only as the nominal
differs from the real; not only by its denomination in gold and silver; but also in that
the latter appears as the law of the movements to which the former is subject. But they
and is never directly observed or even known by them. Hence, commodities

never sell at their value; they sell at prices that are above or below their value.
It cannot be otherwise in a society in which the value of the product is estab-
lished behind the backs of the producers, independent of their conscious activity.
Marx writes, ‘The market value equates itself to the real value by means of
constant fluctuations, not by an equation with real value as some third thing,
but precisely through continual inequality of itself (not, as Hegel would say,
by abstract identity, but by a continual negation of the negation, i.e., of itself
as the negation of the real value)’.46
Marx finds much that is irrational in price-formation under capitalism, since
prices are not determined by the conscious decisions of the agents of produc-
tion. But this is because value-production is itself inherently irrational insofar as the
value of the commodity is not determined by the conscious decisions by the
agents of production. To leave production-relations intact while attempting to
eliminate the ‘irrationality’ of price-formation on the market is inherently self-
defeating, since it assumes away the very irrationality of value-production of
which it is the expression.
The essence of Marx’s critique centres on the non-equivalence of actual
labour-time and socially-necessary labour-time, on the one hand, and the
non-equivalence of value and price, on the other. Taken together, both indicate
that the labour-vouchers proposed by Darimon and Proudhon are in principle non-
convertible. Marx writes, ‘The labour-time ticket, which represents the aver-
age labour-time, would never correspond to the actual labour-time, and never
be convertible into it’.47 Since socially-necessary labour-time is a constantly
shifting magnitude, the amount of value embodied in the commodity would
never be the same as the nominal ‘value’ (or price) of the product expressed
in the labour-token. It is, of course, possible to consciously assign a given
value to a labour-voucher based on the number of hours of labour-time that it
expresses. However, the ‘value’ of that voucher will never coincide with the
actual value of the commodity, which is determined by the average amount of
time necessary to produce it – an average that cannot be consciously assigned
since it undergoes constant change and variation.48 The labour-token would
are always distinct and never coincide, or only quite fortuitously and exceptionally.
The price of the commodities always stands above or below their value’.
46.â•‡ Marx 1986a, p. 75.
47.â•‡ Marx 1986a, pp. 76–7. Emphases in the original.
48.â•‡ Such efforts to consciously plan out the ‘value’ of the commodity characterised
the command-economies of the Soviet Union and Maoist China. That their state-
capitalist economic plans, no matter how elaborate, failed to overcome the discrep-
ancies between the nominal and real value of the commodity was reflected in the
108 • Chapter Two
never command the same ‘value’ as the actual value of the commodity; in
fact, the value of the former would depreciate in comparison with the latter.
Hence, the labour-tokens would be non-equivalent or non-convertible. But
without such convertibility, the labour-token could not function as a medium
of exchange – which is the entire reason for proposing them in the first place!
Marx concludes,
Because price does not equal value, the element determining value, labour time,
cannot be the element in which prices are expressed. For labour time would have
to express itself at once as the determining and the non-determining element,
as the equivalent and the non-equivalent of itself. Because labour time as a
measure of value only exists ideally, it cannot serve as the material for the
comparison of prices.49
On these grounds, he contends,

Just as it is impossible to abolish complications and contradictions arising
from the existence of money alongside specific commodities by changing
the form of moneyâ•›.â•›.â•›.â•›[I]t is likewise impossible to abolish money itself, so
long as exchange value remains the social form of products. It is essential
to understand this clearly, so as not to set oneself impossible tasks, and to
know the limits within which monetary reform and changes in circulation
can remodel the relations of production and the social relations based upon
them.50
So far it may seem that Marx’s critique is primarily negative, in that he empha-
sises his opposition to the Proudhonist conception of how to organise a post-
capitalist society. Does his critique posit or at least imply an alternative to
capitalism? I will argue that as he further develops his discussion, a positive
vision of the future does begin to emerge – especially as he goes deeper into
the reasons why the labour-vouchers advocated by the Proudhonists are non-
convertible.
Later, at the end of the ‘Chapter on Money’, Marx notes that ‘this par-
ticular labour time cannot be directly exchanged for every other particu-
lar labour time; its general exchangeability must first be mediated, it must
widespread existence of a black market in goods and services. Where planning is,
in principle, incapable of ‘rationally’ allocating resources through the calculation of
commodity-values on the basis of political or other non-economic factors, the market
will continue to manifest itself, in however distorted or non-traditional a form. This
can also be seen as a major reason why virtually all of the state-command economies
eventually found it necessary to reconcile theory with reality by openly embracing
market-capitalism, in one or another variant.
49.â•‡ Marx 1986a, p. 77.
50.â•‡ Marx 1986a, p. 83.
acquire an objective form distinct from itself, if it is to acquire this general

exchangeability’.51 Labour-time cannot be directly exchanged for labour-time
because labour is indirectly social so long as capitalist production-relations
prevail. We have already seen a reason for this in the distinction between
actual labour-time and socially-necessary labour-time: the former expresses
a specific number of hours of labour engaged in by a worker, while the latter
expresses a social average that operates irrespective of that worker. Hence,
the value of the product is not determined directly by the particular acts of
the producers, but indirectly, through a social average of many acts of labour
among an array of individuals.
What does it mean to say that labour is indirectly social under capitalism?
The abstract, undifferentiated, and indirect character of labour in societies
governed by value-production reaches its full expression in money. Money,
as the universal equivalent, connects one individual’s labour and product of
labour to someone else’s. The social connection between individuals is estab-
lished through the mediation of exchange. Yet this social relation is indirect
since one individual is connected to another through an abstraction – a univer-
sal equivalent. Under capitalism, individuals are socially connected through
the indirect medium of money because the production-relation that exchange
is based upon is itself indirect. As Marx puts it, money ‘can possess a social
character only because the individuals have alienated their own social rela-
tionship in the form of an object’.52
This is why ‘this particular labour time cannot be directly exchanged for
every other particular labour time’. The advocates of the labour-voucher
assume that value-production is compatible with direct social relations, since
a given unit of labour-time is (presumably) directly exchangeable for an
equivalent product created in the same amount of time. Indeed, Proudhon
and his followers assume that the determination of value by labour-time is the
condition for a truly ‘rational’ and direct system of commodity-exchange. But
their position becomes implausible as soon as it is recognised that value-production
is anything but directly social. Proudhon wants to eliminate the indirect charac-
ter of exchange by harmonising relations of exchange with value-production,
social relations of production that are themselves indirect.
In the course of elaborating upon this difference between directly and indi-
rectly social labour – the first time in his writings that he has made this dis-
tinction – Marx enters into a discussion of what he sees as the content of a new
society. He writes,
51.â•‡ Marx 1986a, p. 107.

52.â•‡ Marx 1986a, p. 97.
110 • Chapter Two
Now if this assumption is made, the general character of labour would

not be given to it only by exchange; its assumed communal character
would determine participation in the products. The communal character
of production would from the outset make the product into a communal,
general one. The exchange initially occurring in production, which would not
be an exchange of exchange values but of activities determined by communal
needs and communal purposes, would include from the beginning the
individual’s participation in the communal world of productsâ•›.â•›.â•›.â•›labour
would be posited as general labour prior to exchange, i.e., the exchange of
products would not in any way be the medium mediating the participation
of the individual in general production. Mediation of course has to take
place.53
This is a remarkable passage that is worth close analysis. First, Marx acknowl-
edges that labour would have a ‘general’ character in a new society. However,
its generality would be radically different from what exists in capitalism,
where discrete acts of individual labour become connected to one another
(or are made general) through the act of commodity-exchange. In contrast,
labour becomes general in the new society prior to the exchange of products,
on the basis of the ‘the communal character of production’ itself. The com-
munity distributes the elements of production according to the individuals’
needs, instead of being governed by social forms that operate independently
of their deliberation. Labour is general insofar as the community directly
decides the manner and form of production. Marx is not referring here to the
existence of small, isolated communities that operate in a world dominated
by value-production. As noted above, Marx never adhered to the notion that
socialism was possible in one country, let alone in one locale.54 He is pointing,
instead, to a communal network of associations in which value-production
has been superseded on a systemic level. Labour is therefore directly social,
not indirectly social. Second, Marx acknowledges that exchange of some sort
would exist in a new society. However, exchange would be radically differ-
ent from what prevails in capitalism, which is governed by the exchange of
commodities. Instead of being based on exchange-values, prices, or markets,
53.â•‡ Marx 1986a, p. 108.

54.â•‡ Considerable confusion continues to characterise contemporary discussions of
‘socialism’ when it comes to this issue. The proclamation of a ‘Bolivarian road to social-
ism’, for instance, as advanced by Hugo Chávez in Venezuela, does not, obviously,
provide a reason to designate the society itself as socialist – regardless of the amount
of national industry and resources that are brought under the direct control of the
government. This is not to suggest that nationalisation of foreign-owned industry and
property is not an important and progressive measure. It is to suggest that it is insuf-
ficient to characterise that society as socialist or even as moving towards socialism.
distribution would be governed by an exchange of activities that are ‘deter-

mined by communal needs and communal purposes’. The latter determines
the exchange of activities, instead of being determined by the exchange of
products that operate independently of it. Third, Marx acknowledges that
social mediation would exist in a new society. However, mediation would
be radically different from that under capitalism, where it has an abstract
character, since ‘mediation takes place through the exchange of commodities,
through exchange value’ and money. In socialism, in contrast, ‘the presup-
position is itself mediated, i.e., communal production, community as the basis
of production, is assumed. The labour of the individual is from the outset
taken as [directly] social labour’.55
Marx’s distinction between indirectly and directly social labour is central to
his evolving concept of a postcapitalist society – not only in the Grundrisse but
also (as I will attempt to show) in much of his later work. He contends that
in capitalism the ‘social character of production is established only post festum
by the elevation of the products into exchange values and the exchange of
these exchange values’, whereas in socialism, ‘The social character of labour is
presupposed, and participation in the world of products, in consumption, is not
mediated by exchange between mutually independent labourers of products
of labour. It is mediated by social production within which the individual
carries on his activity’.56 Marx is envisaging a totally new kind of social media-
tion, one that is direct, instead of indirect, sensuous, instead of abstract: ‘For the
fact is that labour on the basis of exchange values presupposes that neither the
labour of the individual nor his product is directly general, but that it acquires
this form only through objective mediation by means of a form of money dis-
tinct from it’.57 In sum, a society is governed by exchange-value only inso-
far as the sociality of labour is established not through itself, but through an
objective form independent of itself. Such a society is an alienated one, since
(as Marx showed from as early as his writings of 1843–4), the domination of
individuals by objective forms of their own making is precisely what is most
problematic and indeed perverse about capitalism.
Marx proceeds to go deeper into what he means by directly social ‘com-
munal production’ by addressing the role of time in a new society. He writes,
‘Ultimately, all economy is a matter of economy of time’.58 All societies strive
to reduce the amount of time spent on producing and reproducing the necessi-
ties of life. No society is more successful at doing so than capitalism, in which
55.â•‡ Marx 1986a, p. 108.

56.â•‡ Marx 1986a, pp. 108–9.
57.â•‡ Marx 1986a, p. 109.
58.â•‡ Ibid.
112 • Chapter Two
production-relations force individual units of labour to conform to the average

amount of time necessary to produce a given commodity. Since this compul-
sion issues from within the production-process, instead of from a political
authority which lords over it from outside, capitalism is far more effective at
generating efficiencies of time than were precapitalist modes of production.59
Marx repeatedly refers to this as capitalism’s ‘civilising mission’. He says this
because the development and satisfaction of the individual ultimately depends
upon the saving of time so that life can be freed up for pursuits other than
engaging in material production.
But how does the economisation of time relate to a new society governed
by ‘communal production’? Marx indicates that it becomes just as impor-
tant as in capitalism, although it exists in a different form and for a different
purpose:
If we presuppose communal production, the time factor naturally remains
essential. The less time society requires to produce corn, livestock, etc., the
more time it wins for other production, material or spiritualâ•›.â•›.â•›.â•›Economy of
time, as well as the planned distribution of labour time over the various
branches of production, therefore, remains the first economic law if
communal production is taken as the basis. It becomes a law even to a much
higher degree. However, this is essentially different from the measurement
of exchange values (of labours or products of labour) by labour time.60
Marx does not detail exactly how the economisation of time operates in a
society governed by communal production; the text mentions no single
mechanism or lever for accomplishing this. However, in light of his earlier
writings, we can surmise that he sees the motivation for the economisation
of time in a new society as resting upon the effort to achieve what he called
in 1844 a ‘totality of manifestations of life’. When society is freed from the
narrow drive to augment value as an end in itself, it can turn its attention to
supplying the multiplicity of needs and wants that are integral to the social
individual. Instead of being consumed by having and possessing, individuals
can now focus upon what is given short shrift in societies governed by value-
59.â•‡ This applies most of all to sectors of the capitalist economy that directly feel
the pressure to organise themselves according to the social average of labour-time
because they are subject to competitive pressures. Where competition is restricted or
eliminated due to social or political factors, such efficiencies of time will generally not
be as forthcoming. One of the arguments by capitalists for privatisation, free trade
and globalisation is to extend such efficiencies of time into all sectors of the capitalist
economy. The current drive in the USA and Europe to privatise public-sector employ-
ment can be seen as one reflection of this.
60.â•‡ Marx 1986a, p. 109; my emphases.
production – their being, their manifold sensuous and intellectual needs,

whether ‘material or spiritual’. The more people get in touch with their uni-
versality of needs, the greater the incentive to economise time, to reduce the
amount of hours engaged in material production, so that such multiple needs
(such as cultural, social, or intellectual enjoyment) can be pursued and satis-
fied. In a word, whereas in capitalism the incentive to economise time is pro-
vided by an abstract standard, exchange-value,61 in socialism it is provided
by the concrete sensuous needs of the individuals themselves. The drive to
economise time no longer comes from outside the individuals, from value’s
need to grow big with value, but from within, from the quest to manifest the
totality of the individuals’ intellectual, sensuous, and spiritual capabilities.
Marx further spells out his concept of a postcapitalist society in the Grun-
drisse by outlining the three broad stages of human history. The first stage,
which characterises precapitalist societies, is based on personal dependence;
labour is directly social but unfree. Social relations dominate and control the
individual. The individual is personally dependent on the lord or king, vizir
or pharaoh. In such societies ‘human productivity develops only to a lim-
ited extent and at isolated points’.62 Satisfaction is obtained on the basis of a
narrow and relatively under-developed, patriarchal standpoint. The second
stage, which characterises capitalism, is ‘personal independence based upon
dependence mediated by things’; labour is now indirectly social. In capital-
ism, individuals are formally ‘free’ but they are actually dominated not only
things but also by an abstraction, value – both of which are products of their
own creation. Dead labour, in the form of capital, dominates living labour.
The social power of the individual develops in accordance with exchange-
value and money; subjective powers are now expressed in an objective form.
Individuals are subsumed under social production, even as the personal
bonds that connect them are broken up and dissolved: ‘Their production is
not directly social, not the offspring of association distributing labour within
itself’.63 Dissatisfaction is obtained on the basis of a broad and relatively devel-
oped standpoint. However, this ‘second stage’ creates the conditions for the
61.â•‡ Marx had earlier argued in the Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844
that societies dominated by exchange-value narrow and constrict many needs, at the
same time as they conflate and exaggerate other ones. Whereas the need for hav-
ing, owning, and consuming is amplified by capitalism, the need for caring, sharing
and loving is not. A major issue that concerns Marx in the Grundrisse is the extent
to which capitalism’s ‘civilising mission’ of achieving greater economisation of time
comes at the expense of hollowing out the richness of the human personality. I will
return to this, below.
62.â•‡ Marx 1986a, p. 95.
63.â•‡ Marx 1986a, pp. 95–6.
114 • Chapter Two
third stage, postcapitalist society. Marx refers to this stage as follows: ‘Free
individuality, based on the universal development of the individuals and the
subordination of their communal, social productivity, which is their social
possession’.64 Labour is now both directly social and free.
Remarkably, Marx does not here use the word socialism or communism to
describe a postcapitalist society. He instead refers to it as ‘free individuality’.
In fact, most of Marx’s references to ‘socialism’ in the Grundrisse are critical
references to the standpoint of Darimon, Proudhon, and the English neo-
Ricardian radicals. The word ‘communism’ appears even more rarely. Marx
appears to be trying to distinguish himself from other opponents of capitalism
by further clarifying his understanding of the alternative to it. The ‘free indi-
viduality’ that defines the third stage is a very different kind of individuality
than that found in capitalism, since it is based upon the ‘universal development
of individuals’. What predominates is ‘the free exchange of individuals who
are associated on the basis of common appropriation and control of the means
of production’.65 Marx is suggesting that capitalism narrows our individuality
in that every aspect of life is reduced to one and only one sense: the sense of
having or possession. The wealth and multi-dimensionality of the individual’s
needs and desires are narrowed down and hollowed out in capitalism, where
augmenting value – as expressed most of all in obtaining money – is consid-
ered the greatest good. In contrast, in a socialist or postcapitalist society the
universal needs of the individual determine social development.
Marx sharply distinguishes this third stage of history from precapital-
ist formations, in that society and/or the community no longer dominate the
individual. Relations of personal dependence are transcended. The individual
now becomes the social entity.66 He also sharply distinguishes the realm of free
individuality from the second stage – capitalism – because individuals are no
longer cut off from connection or communion with one another but, instead,
relate to each other on the basis of their mutually-acknowledged universal
needs and capabilities.
Marx elaborates upon this by writing that in capitalism, ‘The individuals
are subsumed under social production, which exists outside them as their
fate; but social production is not subsumed under the individuals who man-
age it as their common wealth’.67 In capitalism individuals are subsumed by
social production insofar as relations of production and exchange take on a
life of their own and confront the individual as a hostile force. Marx denies
64.â•‡ Marx 1986a, p. 95.

65.â•‡ Marx 1986a, p. 96.
66.â•‡ Marx 1975r, p. 299.
67.â•‡ Marx 1986a, p. 96.
that capitalist society respects the freedom of the individual; instead, it domi-
nates and controls individuals under social relations of their own making.
Therein lies the perversity of capitalism. It is therefore quite pointless to speak of
a new society as one in which the freedom of individuals is overcome by sub-
jecting them to the control of social relations because this is exactly what governs
the social relations of capitalism.
To use Karel Kosik’s phrase, Marx does not envisage a new society as one
in which the individual is ‘walled in’ by society.68 He argues that this is what
occurs under capitalism. He conceives of the new society as the realm of free
individuality.
But what about capitalism’s ‘civilising mission’? Marx does not leave aside
the contributions of capitalism as he envisages a new society. He notes that
‘the dissolution of all products and activities into exchange values presup-
pose both the dissolution of all established personal (historical) relations of
dependence in production, and the all-round dependence of producers upon
one another’.69 Capitalism gives rise to the idea of free individuality even as
it subsumes individuals under social relations of their own making. Value-
production acts as the great dissolver of firm and fixed social relations, allow-
ing individuals for the first time to conceive of themselves as self-determining
subjects. Hence, the ‘free individuality’ that Marx conceives of as defining the
third stage ‘presupposes precisely the production on the basis of exchange
value, which, along with the universality of the estrangement of individuals
from others, now also produces the universality and generality of all their
relations and abilities’.70 The achievement of a new society based on ‘free indi-
viduality’ depends on the formation of new needs and capabilities generated
by capitalist relations of production and exchange. Without the generation
of such new needs and capacities, a new society would lack the incentivis-
ing principle for economising on labour-time. Largely for this reason, Marx
repeatedly argues in the Grundrisse that the third stage of human history arises
from the ‘material and spiritual conditions’71 created by capitalism itself.72
68.â•‡ See Kosik 1976.

69.â•‡ Marx 1986a, p. 93.
70.â•‡ Marx 1986a, p. 99.
71.â•‡ See Marx 1987a, p. 133: ‘It is precisely the production process of capital that
gives rise to the material and spiritual conditions for the negation of wage-labour
and capital’. See also Marx 1986a, pp. 98, 337: ‘The beauty and greatness lies precisely
in this spontaneously evolved connection, in this material and spiritual exchange’
and ‘the expansion of the range of needs, the differentiation of production, and the
exploration and exchange of all natural and spiritual powers’.
72.â•‡ This should not be confused with the claim, which became predominant among
the Marxists of the Second International and among many others in the twentieth
century, that every country in the world therefore must first undergo capitalism before it
116 • Chapter Two
He sums this up in writing, ‘It is equally certain that individuals cannot sub-
ordinate their own social connections to themselves before they have created
them.’73 It makes a huge difference as to whether the effort to create a post-
capitalist society arises from the womb of social relations already in existence,
or whether it must, instead, create such relations sui generis. It is impossible to
create a new society from scratch. Marx clearly rejects the notion that a new
society can be constructed by turning one’s back on history. The ‘universally
developed individuals’ that characterise the stage that follows capitalism are
themselves a product of prior stages of historical development.
Largely for this reason, the Grundrisse contains a considerable amount of
historical analysis of the development of capitalism as well as of precapital-
ist forms of production. The latter range from discussions of the economic
and social formations in the ancient Greco-Roman world to communal forms
of labour and land-tenure that characterised precapitalist societies in India,
Russia, and China. The section on ‘Precapitalist Economic Formations’ is one
of the most famous and widely-discussed sections of the Grundrisse, and it
has given rise to lively debates since it first became widely available (at least
in German, Russian and Chinese) in the 1950s.74 At issue in many of these
debates is why Marx accorded so much attention to precapitalist formations.
Was it part of an effort to extend a ‘historical-materialist’ analysis of capital-
ism to a delineation of the forms of social production that have characterised
all of human history? Or did Marx have a different aim in mind?
There is no question that Marx was deeply interested in understanding the
manner in which capitalist social relations emerged from out of the womb of
precapitalist modes of production.75 At the same time, the Grundrisse indi-
cates that Marx was just as interested in how a historical understanding of the
emergence of capitalist commodity-production could shed light on a future
postcapitalist society. He points to this in writing,
can be ready for socialism. Marx explicitly argued against that position in his writings
on the Russian village-commune in particular at the end of his life. For an exploration
of Marx’s position on this issue, see Anderson 2010.
73.â•‡ Marx 1986a, p. 98.
74.â•‡ For a discussion of how discussions of Marx’s analysis of precapitalist forma-
tions in the Grundrisse were stimulated by the Chinese Revolution of 1949, see Bailey
and Llobera (eds.) 1981.
75.â•‡ It would be incorrect to presume that Marx was mainly concerned with the
transition from feudalism to capitalism in this section of the Grundrisse, since he
denied that feudalism characterised social relations in South Asia and China prior to
the intervention of European imperialism. Instead, he contended that such societies
were characterised by a different mode of production, which he often referred to as
‘the so-called Asiatic mode of production’. For more on this, see Marx 1975t as well
as Hudis 2004a and Hudis 2010.
On the other hand – and this is much more important for us – our method
indicates the points at which historical analysis must be introduced, or at
which bourgeois economy as a mere historical form of the production process
points beyond itself towards earlier historical modes of productionâ•›.â•›.â•›.â•›These
indications, together with the correct grasp of the present, then also offer the
key to the understanding of the past – a work in its own right, which we
hope to be able to undertake as well. This correct approach, moreover, leads
to points which indicate the transcendence of the present form of production
relations, the movement coming into being, thus foreshadowing the future.
If, on the other hand, the pre-bourgeois phases appear as merely historical,
i.e. transcended premises, so [on the other hand] the present conditions of
production appear as conditions which transcend themselves and thus posit
themselves as historical premises for a new state of society.76
Thus, Marx contends that the analysis of earlier historical forms facilitates
the effort to envisage future social forms. The social relations of any given
society generally appear ‘natural’ and ‘normal’ in the eyes of its participants,
especially when they have prevailed for a considerable length of time. This
proclivity to naturalise social relations is no less prevalent among philoso-
phers, as he shows in his comments about John Stuart Mill and others in the
‘Introduction’ to the Grundrisse. One way to challenge this tendency towards
naturalisation is through the historical investigation of social formations
that preceded capitalism. The peculiar and transitory nature of capitalism is
brought into focus by elucidating the marks that distinguish its relations of
production from precapitalist forms. Thus shaking up this proclivity towards
naturalisation, the examination of the past, in turn, creates a conceptual lens
with which to discern intimations of the future. The antagonistic contradic-
tions of the present historical form are brought into focus through an exami-
nation of the past, which makes it possible to see how such contradictions
foreshadow their transcendence in a future form of social organisation. In this
sense, Marx not only addresses the nature of a possible postcapitalist society
when he directly comments on the future; but he also does so in drawing
out a contrast between capitalist and precapitalist societies.
This is illuminated in a number of ways in the Grundrisse’s discussion of
precapitalist economic forms. First, Marx argues that while capitalist wage-
labour is superior in many respects to slavery in precapitalist societies, wage-
labour does not represent a normatively ‘free’ contractual relation between
employers and employees. Wage-labourers are formally free insofar as they
sell their capacity to labour to a discrete entity, the capitalist, in exchange for
76.â•‡ Marx 1986a, pp. 388–9.

118 • Chapter Two
monetary remuneration. The capitalist pays the workers not for the actual
amount of time worked, but rather for their potential or ability to work.77 In
contrast, slaves are not formally free since the master purchases not their capac-
ity to labour but their actual labour – their full physical being, the entire body
of their labour. Therefore, ‘labour capacity in its totality appears to the free
worker as his own property, one of his own moments, over which he as sub-
ject exercises control, and which he maintains in selling it’.78 Since the wage-
labourer appears to act as a self-determining subject insofar as a contractual
relationship is established with the capitalist, it appears to be a social form that
best corresponds to the concept of freedom. For many living in such a sys-
tem, this condition of formal ‘equality’ seems to offer the best of all possible
worlds. Matters are very different, however, in precapitalist societies, where
no slave (or peasant) considers herself the equal of the master since a con-
tractual relation is absent; the master simply imposes labour upon the slaves
and decides arbitrarily how they shall live. By contrasting such precapitalist
forms with capitalism, Marx is able to pinpoint a contradiction immanent to
wage-labour that it is easy to overlook. In slavery and serfdom, there is no
separation between the active being of persons and the ‘inorganic or objective
conditions’79 of their existence. In capitalism, there is such a separation, since
‘living labour appears as alien vis-à-vis labour capacity whose labour it is,
whose life it expresses, for it is surrendered to capital in return for objectified
labour, for the product of labour itself’.80 Despite appearances, in capitalism, there
is no equal exchange of objectified labour (in the form of capital) for living labour.
There is, instead, an exchange of objectified labour for labour-capacity. The
contractual relation between worker and capitalist rests on that basis. In being
paid not for their actual labour but only for their capacity to labour, the active
being of the workers is separated or alienated from the objective conditions of
existence. ‘Labour itself, like its product, is negated in its form as the labour of
the particular, individualized worker’.81 Wage-labour is therefore far from being
either natural or an expression of actual freedom. It is, rather, a peculiar social
relation in which the formal equality between capitalist and worker rests upon
77.â•‡ The Grundrisse is the first work in which Marx makes this all-important discus-
sion between labour and labour-power, or labour-capacity. Tom Rockmore summarises
the concept thus: ‘What the worker offers is not labour, but labour power required to
maintain himself, which he does by objectifying himself in the form of a commodity,
or product exchanged for money. In other terms, there is a difference between labour
and labour time, and the latter is the quantified form of the power, or the capacity to
produce commodities, and, in this way, capital’. See Rockmore 2002, p. 102.
78.â•‡ Marx 1986a, p. 393.
79.â•‡ Marx 1986a, p. 413.
80.â•‡ Marx 1986a, p. 390.
81.â•‡ Marx 1986a, p. 398.
the alienation of labour. It follows that wage-labour will come to an end with
the abolition of alienated labour.
Second, Marx shows that, while relations of exchange and commodity-
production long preceded capitalism and are found in diverse forms of
precapitalist societies, only in capitalism do they define and determine social
reproduction. Relations of exchange, as is the case with exchange-value, exist
on the margins of precapitalist society, or in their ‘interstices’.82 The subor-
dination of the producers to relations of exchange that exist outside of their
control is historically specific and is not at all ‘natural’. The same is true of the
concept of value itself. He writes,
The economic concept of value does not occur among the ancients. Value
as distinct from pretium [price] was a purely legal category, invoked against
fraud, etc. The concept of value wholly belongs to the latest political
economy, because that concept is the most abstract expression of capital
itself and of the production based on it. In the concept of value, the secret
of capital is betrayed.83
It follows that, just as value-production and exchange-value do not dominate

society prior to capitalism, they do not do so after capitalism.
Third, by focusing on communal forms of association, production and dis-
tribution that precede capitalism, Marx shows that the isolated individuality
and atomisation that characterise modern capitalism are by no means natural
or eternal. The Grundrisse contains one of the most extensive treatments of the
Germanic, Slavic, and ‘Asiatic’ communal forms found in any of his writings.
He denies that the ‘Asiatic’ form is a historical aberration. The historical aber-
ration is, instead, the concept of free individuality abstracted from the com-
munal conditions that prevail in modern capitalist societies. The very concept
of the atomised and independent individual, he argues, arises and can only
arise on the basis of developed social and economic relations, including com-
munal ones. As he puts it, ‘Man becomes individualized only through the
process of history’.84 Moreover, he argues that a society dominated by pre-
capitalist communal forms, despite the social backwardness and political des-
potism that were often associated with them, ‘seems very exalted, when set
82.â•‡ See Marx 1986a, p. 155: ‘In antiquity, exchange value was not the nexus rerum;
it appears as such only among the trading nations, but they had only a carrying trade
and did not themselves produce. At least production was secondary among Phoeni-
cians, Carthaginians, etc. They could live in the interstices of the ancient world, like
the Jews in Poland or in the Middle Ages’.
83.â•‡ Marx 1987a, pp. 159–60.
84.â•‡ Marx 1986a, p. 420.
120 • Chapter Two
against the modern world, in which production is the end of man, and wealth
the end of production’.85
This suggests that just as non-communal forms of labour and production
did not prevail prior to capitalism, they would not prevail after capitalism.
Marx fleshes out this conception by directly addressing the contours of a post-
capitalist society, as follows:
In fact, however, if the narrow bourgeois form is peeled off, what is wealth
is not the universality of the individual’s needs, capacities, enjoyments,
productive forces, etc., produced in universal exchange; what is it if not
the full development of human control over the forces of nature – over
the forces of so-called Nature, as well as those of his own nature? What is
wealth if not the absolute unfolding of man’s creative abilities, without any
precondition other than the preceding historical development, which makes
the totality of this development – i.e., the development of human powers
as such, not measured by any previously given yardstick – an end-in-itself,
through which he does not reproduce himself in any specific character, but
produces his totality, and does not seek to remain something he has already
become, but is in the absolute movement of becoming?86
Although there is much that could be said of this striking passage, what
stands out most of all is the distinction Marx makes between material wealth
and value-production. In capitalism, material wealth takes the form of value;
however, there is no reason for wealth to forever exist in a value-form. It
ceases to do so in Marx’s vision of a postcapitalist society. In a new society, wealth
becomes reconfigured from a merely quantitative to a qualitative determinant;
instead of expressing the reduction of human sensuousness to the abstraction
of value, wealth becomes ‘the absolute unfolding of man’s creative abilities’.87
In such a society, material wealth is not, as in capitalism, a mere means to the
augmentation of value. Instead, wealth – understood as the unfolding of the
richness of the human personality – now becomes an end in itself.
Marx is here returning to and deepening the conception he elaborated in
1844, when he wrote: ‘It will be seen how in place of the wealth and poverty of
political economy come the rich human being and the rich human need. The
rich human being is simultaneously the human being in need of a totality of
human manifestations of life – the man in whom his own realization exists as
85.â•‡ Marx 1986a, p. 411.

86.â•‡ Marx 1986a, pp. 411–12.
87.â•‡ In a work written shortly after the completion of the Grundrisse, Marx quotes
favourably the comment of Pierre Le Pesant Boisguillebert: ‘True wealthâ•›.â•›.â•›.â•›is the
complete enjoyment not only of the necessities of life but also of all the superfluities
and of all that can give pleasure to the senses.’ See Marx 1987b, p. 295.
an inner necessity, as need’.88 For Marx the new society is the realm in which
the development of the totality of human powers is its own end. In capital-
ism, human powers exist to service capital, self-expanding value.89 The latter
serves as the ‘yardstick’ of social development. In contrast, no ‘previously-
given’ yardstick independent of the individuals’ subjective self-activity gov-
erns social development in a postcapitalist society.90
Capitalism, as Marx was fully aware, constantly creates new needs as the
forces of production expand. Such needs, however, are generated in order to
service capital’s thirst for self-expansion. A new society, on the other hand, is
one in which the creation and development of human needs is a self-sufficient
end.91 New needs are generated through a ‘universal exchange’ of humanity’s
creative capacities and serve no purpose other than to augment those capaci-
ties. The generation of such needs is potentially endless; needs are limited
only by the capacity to envisage them (their realisation is, of course, a dif-
ferent matter).92 However, this is not commensurate with the ‘bad infinite’
of value-production, in which new needs are generated for the sake of end-
lessly augmenting an abstraction, value. Value, as Marx notes several times in
88.â•‡ Marx 1975r, p. 304.

89.â•‡ Marx defines capital as ‘a sum of values employed for the production of values’,
and as ‘self-reproducing exchange value’. It should be noted that Marx is not satisfied
with Smith and Ricardo’s definition of capital as congealed or accumulated labour,
since that suggests that capital is a transhistorical phenomenon that characterises all
modes of production. See Marx 1986a, p. 189.
90.â•‡ This is especially important when it comes to treating abstract universal labour-
time as the yardstick of social development – an issue that will be revisited in more
detail in Chapter Four, where I deal with Marx’s Critique of the Gotha Programme.
91.â•‡ There are striking similarities between Marx’s discussion of activities that are
ends-in-themselves and Aristotle’s discussion of the self-sufficient end in his Ethics
and Politics. Whereas Marx speaks of human power as an end in itself, Aristotle speaks
of energeia (sometimes translated as energy or power, but more recently rendered as
‘being-at-work’) as an end in itself: ‘[A]mong some ways of being-at-work, some are
necessary and are chosen for their own sake, it is clear that one ought to place hap-
piness as one of those that are chosen for their own sake and not among those that
are for the sake of something else, since happiness stands in need of nothing but is
self-sufficient’. See Aristotle 2002, p. 190 [1176b3–7].
92.â•‡ It is possible to discern a parallel between Marx’s understanding of need and
Emmanuel Levinas’s discussion of metaphysical desire: ‘The metaphysical desire
does not rest upon any prior kinship. It is a desire that can not be satisfiedâ•›.â•›.â•›.â•›The
metaphysical desire has an other intention; it desires beyond everything that can
simply complete it. It is like goodness – the Desired does not fulfil it, but deepens
it. It is a generosity nourished by the Desired, and thus a relationship that is not the
disappearance of distance, not a bringing together, or – to circumscribe more closely
the essence of generosity and goodness – a relationship whose positivity comes from
remoteness, from separation, for it nourishes itself, one might say, with its hunger.’
See Levinas 1969, p. 34.
122 • Chapter Two
the Grundrisse, appears as the absolute subject in capitalism.93 In contrast, once

wealth is freed from its value-integument, a ‘multiplicity of needs’94 is gener-
ated for the sake of augmenting a concrete, sensuous force – that of the individ-
uals themselves, who step forth as the real, human subject. The actual individual
now finally emerges as the absolute subject. Largely for this reason, Marx writes
that an ‘absolute movement of becoming’95 characterises postcapitalist soci-
ety. Such an ‘absolute movement’ of human capability and creativity, which is
thwarted by capitalist value-production, is the basis of the new society.
Throughout the Grundrisse, Marx points to a possible transcendence of
value-production by emphasising the dissolution of social formations. There
is hardly any word that appears more often in his work than dissolution.96 He
writes, ‘Wage labour appears as the dissolution, the destruction of relations
in which labour was fixed in all respects of income, content, locality, scope,
etc. Hence as negation of the fixity of labour and its remunerations’.97 He adds,
‘The dissolution of all products and activities into exchange values presup-
poses both the dissolution of all established personal (historical) relations of
dependence in production, and the all-round dependence of producers upon
one another’.98 And he writes of how capital promotes the ‘dissolution of the
relation to the earth – to land or soil – as a natural condition of production’.99
Marx’s emphasis on dissolution is no less emphatic when it comes to
analysing precapitalist economic formations, as the following passage – in
which dissolution is mentioned no less than six times – suggests:
93.â•‡ See Marx 1986a, p. 196: ‘But the whole of circulation considered in itself consists
in the same exchange value, exchange value as subject, positing itself once as com-
modity and again as money; it is the movement by means of which exchange value
posits itself in this dual determination’. See also Marx 1986a, p. 237: ‘Value enters as
subject’. It should be noted, however, that value is the subject in capitalism only in a
restricted sense, since (as Marx states) ‘it is labour which appears confronting capital as
subject’. ‘Value enters as subject’ insofar as labour is employed as a means to augment
value, which means that the self-expansion of value is dependent on a force or subject
that is other to itself – living labour. Value is the absolute subject only in a qualified,
Hegelian sense – as an absolute that contains its highest opposition within itself.
94.â•‡ Marx 1986a, p. 451.
95.â•‡ The formulation recalls Marx’s statement in ‘Private Property and Communism’
that ‘communism as such is not the goal of human development, the form of human
society’. No particular form of society represents the ‘end’ of history if it is defined
by the satisfaction of human needs and capacities as an end in itself, since needs are
interminable. See Marx 1975r, p. 306.
96.â•‡ The German term is Auflösung, which means ‘unravelling’ but which also car-
ries an implication of a subsequent solution.
97.â•‡ Marx 1986a, p. 13.
98.â•‡ Marx 1986a, p. 93.
99.â•‡ Marx 1986a, p. 421.
Such historical processes of dissolution can take the form of the dissolution
of the dependent relationship which binds the worker to the soil and to
the lord but which actually presupposes his ownership of the means of
subsistenceâ•›.â•›.â•›. They can also take the form of the dissolution of these relations
of landed property which constitute him as yeoman, as a free working petty
landowner or tenant (colonus), i.e. as a free peasant. The dissolution of the
even more ancient forms of communal property and of real community
needs no special mention. Or they can take the form of the dissolution of
guild relationsâ•›.â•›.â•›.â•›Lastly, they can take the form of the dissolution of various
client relationshipsâ•›.â•›.â•›.100
The reason for Marx’s repeated emphasis on dissolution is not immediately

self-evident. The Grundrisse explores a number of social formations that
existed for many centuries or even millennia, including the ‘Asiatic’ mode
of production. Surely not all of these formations were forever on the verge
of collapsing or dissolving. Why, then, does Marx place so much emphasis
on the tendency towards dissolution, even when he is analysing relatively
stable social formations?
I would argue that Marx was not interested in writing a history of social
or economic development as much as detailing the process by which a new,
free society is compelled to come into being. If Marx were engaged in histori-
cal analysis for the purpose of developing an empirical sociology, he would
need to give as much weight to tendencies towards stability and equilibrium
as to dissolution and decay. Yet Marx does not do so: his historical analyses
are decidedly one-sided, insofar as they emphasise the constraints faced by
social formations in the face of changing historical circumstances. He does so
because his real object of analysis is not so much the past as the future. In trac-
ing out how various formations undergo dissolution, Marx is elucidating the
factors immanent in the present that point to a future state of affairs.
Contrary to the claim that Marx focused mainly on the present and sec-
ondarily on the past, his emphasis on tendencies towards dissolution in his
analyses of both the present and the past indicate that he was most of all
concerned about the future. For Marx, however, the future cannot simply be
spelled out on the basis of the individual’s imagination: it must be traced out
through an analysis of existing social formations. Marx spells this out in the
following passage:
100.â•‡ Marx 1986a, p. 426.

124 • Chapter Two
Within bourgeois society, based as it is upon exchange value, relationships of

exchange and production are generated which are just so many mines to blow
it to pieces. (A multitude of antagonistic forms of the social entity, whose
antagonism, however, can never be exploded by a quiet metamorphosis).
On the other hand, if we did not find latent in society as it is, the material
conditions of production and the corresponding relationships of exchange
for a classless society, all attempts to explode it would be quixotic.101
Marx locates the specific process by which capitalist social relations create
the conditions for a supersession of value-production in his discussion of
the relation between necessary and surplus labour-time. This represents one
of the most important sections of the Grundrisse. Along with its accompany-
ing discussion of the machinery and ‘the automaton’, it has given rise to a
number of debates in Marxism and Marx scholarship.
For Marx, necessary labour is the amount of labour-time needed to create
enough value to ensure the subsistence of the labourer – the time requisite
for enabling the worker to re-enter the labour-process on a renewed basis. It
depends on an assortment of factors, such as the level of a society’s material
development, what is specifically required in a given time or place for work-
ers to replenish their labour-power, moral considerations, etc. Surplus-labour
refers to the excess amount of time beyond what it takes to produce the work-
ers’ subsistence. This distinction is of great importance, as it serves as the
basis of Marx’s concept of surplus-value.102 He argues,
The great historical aspect of capital is the creation of this surplus labour,
superfluous from the point of view of mere use value, of mere subsistence,
and its historical mission is fulfilled when, on the one hand, needs are
developed to the point where surplus labour beyond what is necessary has
itself become a general need and arises from the individual needs themselves;
and on the other, when, by strict discipline of capital to which successive
generations have been subjected, general industriousness has been developed
as the universal asset of the new generation.103
Capital spurs the formation of new needs beyond what is required for subsis-
tence, as part of spurring the augmentation of value. The lesser the (relative)
amount of value that goes to sustain the worker, the greater the (relative)
101.â•‡ Marx 1986a, pp. 96–7.

102.â•‡ To my knowledge, the first time that Marx explicitly used the term ‘surplus-
value’ was in the Grundrisse, in the course of discussing the difference between neces-
sary and surplus-labour. See Marx 1986a, pp. 249–50. The concept is implicit in The
Poverty of Philosophy; however, the term ‘surplus-value’ does not appear there.
103.â•‡ Marx 1986a, p. 250.
amount of value that accrues to capital. The greater the ratio of surplus-labour
relative to necessary labour, the more expansive human needs become –
even as they are subjected to capital’s dominance. Capital’s ‘progressive’ or
‘civilising’ mission is to expand the boundaries of human needs. Although
this unfolds in an alienating process at the expense of the workers, it creates
the possibility of richer and more expansive conditions of life: ‘As the cease-
less striving for the general form of wealth, however, capital forces labour
beyond the limits of natural need and thus creates the material elements for
the development of the rich individuality’.104
There are, however, internal barriers to capital’s effort to surmount all
obstacles to its drive to increase the proportion of surplus-labour relative to
necessary labour, since ‘The smaller the fractional part already which repre-
sents necessary labour, the greater the surplus labour, the less can any increase
in productivity perceptively diminish necessary labour’.105 Surplus-labour
expands so dramatically vis-à-vis necessary labour that capital cannot further
reduce necessary labour without undermining the only source of value, living
labour itself:
It is the law of capital, as we have seen, to produce surplus, disposable time.
It can do this only by setting in motion necessary labour, i.e., by entering into
exchange with the worker. It is therefore the tendency of capital to produce
as much labour as possible, just as it is its tendency to reduce necessary
labour to a minimumâ•›.â•›.â•›.â•›It is just as much the tendency of capital to render
human labour (relatively) superfluous, as to drive it on without limit.106
As Marx sees it, the logic of capital therefore drives capitalism into an ulti-
mately untenable position, by failing to give full employment to its own
value-creating substance.
Moreover, as capital renders human labour relatively superfluous, even as
the magnitude of capital increases, the rate of profit begins to decline. The
decline in the rate of profit, Marx argues, is a manifestation of the increased
productivity of labour – that is, capital’s effectiveness at increasing surplus-
labour relative to necessary labour. Capital can, of course, try to get around this
problem. One way is by increasing the length of the working-day, to increase
absolute surplus-value. Yet there are limits to this since a day only contains
24 hours. Another way is through a ‘spatial addition of more simultaneous
working days’107 – such as by increasing the size of the labouring populace by
104.â•‡ Marx 1986a, p. 251.

105.â•‡ Marx 1986a, p. 265.
106.â•‡ Marx 1986a, p. 326.
107.â•‡ Ibid.
126 • Chapter Two
evicting farmers from the land. At the same time, however, capital’s tendency
is to ‘reduce to a minimum the many simultaneous working days’.108 As much
as capital tries to increase the amount of working-time in order to accrue more
value, it is driven, at one and the same time, to reduce the amount of necessary
working-time. Surplus-labour increases at a faster rate than necessary labour-
time, replicating the original problem. There is too much capital relative to
living labour.
Capitalist value-production therefore finds itself caught in an insuperable
contradiction: ‘Capital, in positing surplus labour, equally and simultane-
ously posits and does not posit necessary labour; it exists only as necessary
labour both exists and does not exist’.109 This very contradiction creates the
conditions for a higher form of social organisation, since ‘an individual can
satisfy his own needs only by simultaneously satisfying the needs of, and pro-
ducing a surplus over and above that for, another individual’. Thus, ‘it is this
very development of wealth which makes it possible to transcend these con-
tradictions’.110
Marx concludes, ‘Capital posits the production of wealth itself and thus the
universal development of the productive forces, posits the continual over-
throw of its existing presuppositions, as the presuppositions of its repro-
duction’. Capital is based on conditions that point beyond itself, not despite
but because ‘the elaboration of the productive forces, of general wealth, etc.,
knowledge, etc., takes place in such a way that the working individual alien-
ates himself’. This serves as ‘The basis [of] the possibility of the universal
development of the individuals, and their actual development from this basis
as constant transcendence of their barrier, which is recognised as such, and is
not interpreted as a sacred limit. The universality of the individual not as an
imaginary concept, but the universality of his real and notional relations’.111
The development of the material productive forces posits the possibility of
this transcendence; however, it does not by itself constitute it. What consti-
tutes the transcendence of capitalist value-production is a state of existence
in which the universality of needs is fulfilled and actualised. The very process
that limits and impoverishes the workers by reducing their labouring activity
to a mere means of increasing the productive forces turns into its opposite,
in that this process helps lead to a new sensitivity and understanding of uni-
versal needs, connections, enjoyments, and experiences that can realise the
wealth of the human personality.
108.â•‡ Marx 1986a, p. 327.

109.â•‡ Ibid.
110.â•‡ Marx 1986a, p. 328.
111.â•‡ Marx 1986a, pp. 465–6.
It appears, therefore, that even when tackling such basic economic catego-
ries as the relation between necessary and surplus labour-time, Marx focuses
much of his theoretical attention on forms of social existence that could follow
capitalism.
This is further elaborated in Marx’s discussion of machinery and ‘the
automaton’ in the concluding part of the ‘Chapter on Capital’. He argues that
the logical trajectory of capitalism is to replace living labour at the point of
production with dead labour – machinery and labour-saving technology. His
discussion focuses on the ramifications of an ever-increasing productivity of
labour. The value of each particular commodity decreases with increases in
productivity, since the commodity embodies fewer hours of labour-time. Yet
by producing greater amounts of commodities in a given unit of time, the
total amount of value increases considerably. As a result, ‘immediate labour
and its quantity disappear as the determining principle of production, of the
creation of use-values.’ Although labour remains ‘indispensable’ to capitalist
production, it ‘becomes a subaltern moment in comparison to scientific work,
the technological application of the natural sciences’.112
It appears, at first sight, that Marx is simply discussing the well-known
tendency of capitalism to promote technological innovation. While that is
surely his empirical focus, he is not only detailing a major component of how
capitalism grows and develops. His attention is also focused on how this phe-
nomenon points to a form of social existence that can follow capitalism. He
writes, ‘Thus capital works to dissolve itself as the form which dominates
production’.113 Since living labour as the source and determinant of value
begins to disappear under the impact of technological innovation, the exis-
tence of value-production itself is placed in jeopardy – even though the mass
of capital grows under its impetus. As the importance of living labour as the
source of value begins to recede, the possibility arises of another way of pro-
ducing use-values – one that is not tied to labour as the universal medium
of social reproduction. The very principle that governs the development of
capitalism – the increased productivity of labour through the use of labour-
saving devices – points towards a possible supersession of capitalism. Thus,
just when capital takes over and dominates living labour to an unprecedented
degree, the conditions that ensure the existence of capital begin to dissolve.
Marx states that capitalism ‘quite unintentionally reduces human labour, the
expenditure of human energy, to a minimum. This will be to the advantage of
emancipated labour and is the condition for its emancipation’.114
112.â•‡ Marx 1987a, p. 86.

113.â•‡ Ibid.
114.â•‡ Marx 1987a, p. 87.
128 • Chapter Two
Marx argues that the logical trajectory of this substitution of dead labour for
living labour is the following:
Labour no longer appears so much as included in the production process, but
rather man relates himself to that process as its overseer and regulatorâ•›.â•›.â•›.â•›[the
labourer] stands beside the production process, rather than being its main
agent. Once this transformation has taken place, it is neither the immediate
labour performed by man himself, nor the time for which he works, but the
appropriation of his own general productive power, his comprehension of
Nature and domination of it by virtue of his being a social entity – in a word,
the development of the social individual – that appears as the cornerstone
of production and wealthâ•›.â•›.â•›.â•›As soon as labour time in its immediate form
ceases to be the great source of wealth, labour time ceases and must cease
to be its measure, and therefore exchange value [must cease to be the
measure] of use value. The surplus labour of the masses has ceased to be
the condition for the development of general wealth, just as the non-labour
of a few has ceased to be the condition for the development of the general
powers of the human mind. As a result, production based upon exchange
value collapses, and the immediate material production process itself is
stripped of its form of indigence and antagonism.115
Marx is envisaging a situation in which labour ceases to be the measure or

medium of social relations. Thus, he denies that labour is the ‘cornerstone
of production and wealth’ in all forms of society. Least of all does he think
that labour will serve as the cornerstone of a postcapitalist society. Instead,
‘the development of the social individual’ in its variety of manifestations –
including those not limited to labour or material production – would serve
as the cornerstone of wealth. Capitalism prepares the way for this through
its proclivity to reduce the relative importance of living labour. This will
free up individuals in the new society to pursue talents and capacities that
are not restricted to the labour-process. Marx envisages the following: ‘Free
development of individualities, and hence not the reduction of necessary
labour time in order to posit surplus labour, but in general the reduction of
necessary labour of society to a minimum, to which then corresponds the
artistic, scientific, etc., development of individuals, made possible by the time
thus set free and the means produced for all of them’.116
These passages clearly highlight Marx’s emphasis on how the specific
features of a postcapitalist society emerge from within the womb of capital-
115.â•‡ Marx 1987a, p. 91.

116.â•‡ Ibid.
ism itself. At the same time, his analysis raises some major questions. If liv-
ing labour ‘disappears’ or is severely reduced as capitalism fully develops,
how is a new society actually going to come into being? Will it arise quasi-
automatically, through the development of the capital-relation? Or will it
arise consciously, through a revolution by social agents resisting the capital-
relation? How is it possible to uproot the capital-relation from within if the
role of living labour ‘disappears’ from the process of producing and repro-
ducing it? Marx does not explicitly address these questions in this section of
the Grundrisse.117 It appears that there is somewhat of a discord between objec-
tive and subjective factors in his analysis, in that he does not directly indicate
how subjective forms of resistance can overcome the objective tendency of
capitalist accumulation that he outlines in his analysis.118
On these grounds, many objectivist Marxists have argued that the Grun-
drisse indicates that Marx did not place as much emphasis on class-struggle
and subjective forms of resistance as has widely been assumed. Moishe Pos-
tone sees the Grundrisse as the most graphic confirmation that, for Marx, not
living but dead labour is the emancipatory alternative. Postone is in this regard
very much following the lead of Herbert Marcuse, who argued four decades
earlier that this section of the Grundrisse anticipates contemporary capitalism,
insofar as a politicised working class opposed to capital has become largely
non-existent.119
In contrast to Marcuse, Postone, and other objectivist Marxists, Antonio
Negri has argued that the Grundrisse is more deeply-rooted in proletarian
subjectivity than any of his other major works. He does so by focusing on the
sections of the Grundrisse in which Marx explicitly connects subjective and
objective factors, as when he writes, ‘But capital too, cannot confront capital,
if it is not confronted by labour, for capital is capital only as non-labour, in this
antithetical relation’.120 Negri also makes much of the section on machinery
and ‘the automaton’ by arguing that its discussion anticipates the emergence
of a post-industrial information-economy. As a result of decades of intense
proletarian revolt, Negri contends, capitalism has been forced to replace
117.â•‡ Marx does nevertheless note, ‘Just as the system of bourgeois society unfolds
to us only gradually, so also does its negation of itself, which is its immediate result’.
See Marx 1987a, p. 98.
118.â•‡ Raya Dunayevskaya has argued that the role of subjective resistance tends to be
downplayed in the section on machinery, in part because the Grundrisse was written
during the quiescent 1850s, when the working class was not in motion: ‘Thus, as against
Capital’s graphic description of the workers’ resistance to the discipline of capital in
the process of production itself, the Grundrisse still stresses the material condition for
the solution of conflict and contradictions’. See Dunayevskaya 2003, p. 70.
119.â•‡ See Marcuse 1964, pp. 22–48.
120.â•‡ Marx 1986a, p. 218.
130 • Chapter Two
living labour with labour-saving devices, thereby making the former so super-
fluous that value-production has ceased to govern contemporary capitalism.
What Marx’s Grundrisse posits as occurring after capitalism – the transcen-
dence of value-production through the elimination of living labour from the
production-process – Negri sees as defining the contemporary information-
economy. Value-production, he argues, no longer characterises capitalism,
which makes it all the easier, in his view, to move towards replacing it with an
alternative form of social organisation. The emancipatory project, for Negri, is
fundamentally political in character, since capitalism has already sublated its
economic reliance on value.
While a full analysis and evaluation of these positions cannot be developed
here, it is important to exercise caution when it comes to drawing conclusions
from the passages in the Grundrisse concerning the relation of necessary and
surplus labour-time and machinery. While Marx sometimes writes of the ‘dis-
appearance’ of living labour in the production-process, it appears that he is
addressing a tendency more than an accomplished result. This is reinforced by
the fact that the ‘Chapter on Capital’ also emphasises the ways in which the
incorporation of labour-saving devices into the production-process can also
increase the employment of living labour. Marx writes,
This is striking proof that, under the dominion of capital, the employment
of machinery does not reduce work, but rather lengthens it. What it reduces
is necessary labour, not the labour necessary for the capitalist. Since fixed
capital is devalued as long as it is not employed in production, its growth
is linked with the tendency to make work perpetual.121
While capitalism strives to reduce the relative amount of labour-time at the

point of production, it also strives to augment value. Capitalism is defined
by a complex dynamic, rather than by a unilinear replacement of all workers
by machines. The incorporation of new machinery in the production-process
necessitates that the value of the constant capital is reproduced with each
new cycle of capitalist production, thereby creating an impetus to increase
the absolute (if not relative) employment of labour. Marx refers to this pro-
cess as follows: ‘By striving to reduce labour time to a minimum, while,
on the other hand, positing labour time as the sole measure and source of
wealth, capital itself is a contradiction-in-progress’.122 Two contradictory ten-
dencies occur side-by-side. On the one hand, capitalism is driven to reduce
necessary labour-time to a minimum; on the other hand, capitalism creates
121.â•‡ Marx 1987a, p. 204.

122.â•‡ Marx 1987a, p. 91.
disposable time by increasing surplus-labour. Marx notes that this contradic-

tion becomes increasingly evident with the development of the productive
forces.123 The reduction of necessary labour-time does not necessarily lead to
an absolute reduction of surplus labour-time. Marx writes, ‘Hence, the most
developed machinery now compels the labourer to work for a much longer time than
the savage does, or than the labourer himself did when he was using the simplest,
crudest instruments’.124
Marx refers to this contradiction being superseded in a new society, in
which necessary labour ‘will be measured by the needs of the social indi-
vidual’ while ‘the disposable time of all will increase’.125
Nevertheless, there seems to be a problem here in Marx’s argument, for the
Grundrisse’s discussion of capitalism’s tendency to eliminate value-creating
labour from the production-process does not square easily with the claim that
the transcendence of value-production is achieved by a subjective force that
is internal to it, the proletariat. This is not to suggest that Marx did not believe
that such an outcome was conceivable or even inevitable; it rather suggests
that such a conclusion does not dialectically flow from the contours of the pas-
sages under consideration in the Grundrisse. No thinker, not even one as great
as Marx, is immune to the circumstances in which his or her ideas are com-
posed; and the Grundrisse was composed in a quiescent political period in
Europe in which the working class was not exactly storming the heavens.
Two important qualifications need to be kept in mind here, however. First,
it seems over-hasty to conclude that the Grundrisse suggests that the actual
elimination of living labour from the production-process will occur under
capitalism. Marx is delineating a tendency, not a finished result. Objectivist and
subjectivist Marxists appear to have seized on these passages by jumping to
conclusions not warranted by the full text. Marx neither infers that value-
production would be annulled in capitalism, nor does he suggest that living
labour ceases to be a socially-determinative force in it. The transcendence of
value-production and labour as the medium governing the social metabolism
occur in a new, postcapitalist society, even if the conditions for this future
state of existence are readied and prepared in the womb of the old one. Sec-
ond, Marx seriously revised his discussion of the reduction of living labour
from the production-process in Capital, in which he ties capitalism’s objec-
tive movement much more integrally to human forces of resistance than in
the Grundrisse, which was an unfinished draft that he chose not to publish.
He makes a crucial comment that reflects this revised view in Volume III of
123.â•‡ Marx 1987a, p. 94.

124.â•‡ Ibid. Emphasis is in the original.
125.â•‡ Ibid.
132 • Chapter Two
Capital (drafted after the Grundrisse, in the mid-1860s), writing: ‘A develop-

ment in the productive forces that would reduce the absolute number of work-
ers, and actually enable the whole nation to accomplish its entire production
in a shorter period of time, would produce a revolution, since it would put the
majority of the population out of action’.126
Marx’s point is that although capital’s tendency is to eliminate living
labour, it faces ‘characteristic barriers’ that prevent this tendency from becom-
ing fully realised. One of them is the threat of social revolution by unemployed
workers who are cast aside as capitalism becomes increasingly productive.127
Capitalism does not meekly surrender to this subjective threat; nor does the
threat end capitalism’s tendency to replace value-creating labour by machin-
ery at the point of production. Instead, capitalism responds to the risk that
its actions will ‘produce a revolution’ by increasing the employment of non-
productive workers even as it reduces, absolutely as well as relatively, the
number of value-creating productive workers at the point of production. This
helps explain the significant growth of a service-economy and a public sector
as capitalism develops. Yet, since capitalism is continuously driven to reduce
the proportion of living labour to dead labour, over time even the relative
over-employment of non-productive workers comes under attack by capital.
This is the situation that West faces at the start of the twenty-first century, as
seen in the concerted effort to reduce the number as well as the wages and
benefits of public-service workers through austerity-measures. Whether such
measures will prove counter-productive from the vantage-point of capital, by
producing the revolution that Marx speaks of in Volume III of Capital, remains
a key question.
Finally, Marx takes a step further into a new society at the end of the Grun-
drisse in addressing whether play can replace labour after capitalism. He cites
Fourier, stating that it was his ‘great merit’ to have emphasised the need to
transform conditions of production, instead of relations of exchange. How-
ever, he takes issue with Fourier’s view that play can replace labour on the
126.â•‡ Marx 1981a, p. 372. Capital, unlike the Grundrisse, was written in a period of
considerable working-class revolt and organisation in both Europe and the USA, as
seen in the American Civil War and the formation of the International Workingmen’s
Association, in which Marx was a principle leader and activist.
127.â•‡ In Volume I of Capital, Marx also radically revises his discussion of this phe-
nomenon, as compared with the Grundrisse, in his discussion of ‘The Absolute General
Law of Capitalist Accumulation’. He there emphasises the formation of a surplus-
army of labour – the unemployed – as a direct result of the rising organic composition
of capital. He discusses this reserve-army of labour as both a stabilising factor for
capitalism and as a potentially revolutionary force that can bring the system down.
See Marx 1976e, pp. 927–30.
grounds that freely-associated human relations require great discipline and

development. Marx conceives of free activity as not only leisure but also as
exercise,128 writing of the importance of ‘material creative and self-objectifying
science, with respect to the developed man, whose mind is the repository of
the accumulated knowledge of society’.129 Truly free activity, for Marx, con-
sists of conscious, purposeful activity, which is an arduous exercise – what
Hegel called ‘the suffering, the patience, and the labour of the negative’.130
Far from downplaying the role of ideas or seeing them as merely epiphe-
nomenal, Marx considers it imperative for a new society to appropriate the
‘accumulated knowledge’ of previous historical eras. The fully-developed
person, who seeks to express a totality of manifestations of life, cannot do
without the vast storehouse of accumulated knowledge that human history
bequeaths us. A new society is not defined only by its level of material devel-
opment, but also by the level of human intellect and human spirit.
The ‘third draft’ of Capital, 1861–3

After finishing the Grundrisse, Marx published a relatively brief work entitled
A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy. Although it marked an effort
to publicly present some of his theoretical development of the late 1850s, it is
far less comprehensive and sweeping than either the Grundrisse or Volume I
of Capital. Marx was not yet prepared in 1859 to publish the comprehensive
study that he had had in mind for some time; therefore, A Contribution to
the Critique of Political Economy has a more modest scope, containing only
two brief chapters – ‘The Commodity’ and ‘Money or Simple Reproduction’.
Later, Marx considerably re-worked these chapters for Volume I of Capital,
first published in 1867. Since many of the points contained in A Contribution
to the Critique of Political Economy are found in either the Grundrisse or Capital,
it will not be analysed here.
128.â•‡ The parallels with Aristotle’s discussion of rational happiness [eudaimonia] in

his Ethics are again striking. Aristotle writes, ‘Therefore, happiness does not consist
in play, for it would be absurd for our end to be play, and to work hard and undergo
troubles all through one’s life for the sake of playing. For we choose everything so
to speak, for the sake of something else, except happiness, since this is the end. But
to be earnest and to labour for the sake of play seems foolish and too childish’. See
Aristotle 2002, p. 191 [1176b30–33]. Of course, Marx is talking about what all human-
beings are capable of, whereas Aristotle is referring to an aristocratic few.
129.â•‡ Marx 1987a, p. 97.
130.â•‡ Hegel 1977, p. 10.
134 • Chapter Two
More germane is the work that comes between A Contribution to the Cri-
tique of Political Economy and Volume I of Capital – the 1861–3 draft of Capital.
This ‘third’ draft of Capital131 is extremely detailed and comprehensive, con-
sisting of over 2,000 printed pages.132 A section of the draft, consisting of a
lengthy criticism of the works of other economic theorists, was published
several decades after Marx’s death as a separate work, entitled by its editors
Theories of Surplus Value.133 The entire draft has only become available in the
past several decades and is just beginning to receive the scholarly attention
that it deserves.134
The 1861–3 draft contains a number of innovative formulations and concepts
that are not explicitly found in Marx’s earlier work, the Grundrisse included.
These include a detailed analysis of the origin and nature of surplus-value,
the contradiction between ‘living labour’ and objectified or ‘dead labour’, and
a preliminary discussion of the forms of value as well as the fetishism of com-
modities. The draft of 1861–3 also represents Marx’s first effort to develop a
theory of ‘average prices’, and discussion of the difference between ‘market-
value’ and ‘individual value’, over-production, and capitalist crisis, all of
which later became critically important to Volumes II and III of Capital.
The 1861–3 draft also touches on the nature of a postcapitalist society in
a number of important ways. However, Marx’s discussion of this is not as
explicit or detailed as in the Grundrisse. One reason for this may be that Marx
decided not to directly engage in a critical discussion of the shortcomings of
other socialist and communist writers in this work on the grounds that it was
more important for him to focus on a critique of the major bourgeois econo-
mists. He writes, ‘In accordance with the plan of my work socialist and com-
131.â•‡ Recall that this is based on my having considered the 1847 Poverty of Philosophy
as the first ‘draft’. Most discussions of the manuscript of 1861–3 consider it as the
second draft of Capital.
132.â•‡ The English edition of the 1861–3 draft of Capital takes up four full volumes
of the Marx-Engels Collected Works – volumes 30–33.
133.â•‡ Karl Kautsky published the first German edition of this work in 1905–10, which
he extracted from the manuscript of 1861–3 and published as a separate book. The
rest of the manuscript remained unpublished and did not appear even in German
until the late 1970s and early 1980s. Although Marx originally intended (as of 1863)
for what he called the ‘history of theory’ to be included in the first volume of Capital,
he changed his mind in the mid-1860s and decided, instead, to relegate this material
to a separate ‘Book Four’ of Capital. Since he originally planned that what appeared,
after his death, as Volumes II and III of Capital to be a single volume comprising ‘Book
Two’ and ‘Book Three’, Theories of Surplus Value should be considered ‘Volume IV’ of
Capital. It has never, however, been published in this form, which in part explains its
neglect by many commentators on Marx’s works. See Marx 1976e, p. 93.
134.â•‡ See Dussel 1988. A somewhat abbreviated version is available in English in
Dussel 2001.
munist writers are entirely excluded from the historical reviewsâ•›.â•›.â•›.â•›I therefore
exclude such eighteenth-century writers as Brissot, Godwin and the like, and
likewise the nineteenth-century socialists and communists’.135
At the same time, since most of the socialist and communist writers sub-
ject to critique by Marx in other contexts take Ricardo’s formulation of the
determination of value by labour-time as their conceptual point of departure,
Marx’s extended criticism of Ricardo in the draft of 1861–3 helps in important
ways to understand his view of the alternative to capitalism.
Marx’s criticisms of Ricardo and his followers (such as James Mill, John
Stuart Mill, Thomas Hodgskin and others) are quite lengthy, totaling over six
hundred pages. His main objection is that Ricardo and the post-Ricardians
focus exclusively on the quantitative side of value, on the amount of labour-
time embodied in a product, rather than on the qualitative side, on the kind of
labour that creates value. He writes, ‘Ricardo starts out from the determina-
tion of the relative values (or exchangeable values) of commodities by “the quantity
of labour”.’ However, ‘The character of this “labour” is not further explained’.136
If the value of all commodities is determined by the quantity of labour-time
embodied in them, all commodities must contain a common substance. Com-
modities have differing exchange-values insofar as they contain different
amounts of this substance. Yet why does living labour, a subjective activity,
take the form of this substance? Ricardo and his followers never ask the ques-
tion because they assume that value is simply a natural property of labour.
Marx, on the contrary, argues that living labour serves as the substance of
value only when labour assumes a specific social form – the dual form of con-
crete versus abstract labour. Labour can serve as the substance of value only if
it is alienated labour. ‘But Ricardo does not examine the form – the peculiar char-
acteristic of labour that creates exchange value or manifests itself in exchange
values – the nature of this labour’.137
Why does Ricardo never investigate the nature of value-creating labour?
Why does he conflate ‘labour’ with value-creating labour? What prevented
him from grasping the historical specificity of value-creating labour? The
answer for Marx, I would argue, is that Ricardo’s theoretical categories did
135.â•‡ Marx 1989a, p. 241. See also Marx 1989b, p. 373: ‘During the Ricardian period
of political economy its antithesis, communism (Owen) and socialism (Fourier,
St. Simon, the latter only in its first beginnings), [come] also [into being]. According
to our plan, however, we are here concerned only with that opposition which takes
as its starting-point the premises of the economists’.
136.â•‡ Marx 1989a, p. 389.
137.â•‡ Ibid. See also Marx 1989b, p. 325: ‘All commodities can be reduced to labour
as their common element. What Ricardo does not investigate is the specific form in
which labour manifests itself as the common element of commodities’.
136 • Chapter Two
not proceed from the standpoint of the subjectivity of the labourer. Ricardo
is more interested in the products of labour than in the labourer. He wants to
understand how products come into being (such as commodities, capital and
money) and how their value is determined. The product (capital) is the sub-
ject of his analysis, not the human-being who creates and shapes it. He never
conceptually looks into the factory to see what occurs in the ‘storm and stress’
of the actual production-process. As a result, he fails to distinguish between
living labour as a generic activity and the peculiar alienated kind of labour
that actually creates value.
The manuscript of 1861–3, when read as a whole, shows that Marx took a
very different approach. The section on Ricardo and other economists is pre-
ceded by a part on ‘The Production Process of Capital’.138 Marx here focuses
on the central contradiction that is internal to the capitalist process of pro-
duction – the contradiction between objectified labour and living labour. He
writes, ‘an increase in value means nothing more than an increase in objecti-
fied labour; but it is only through living labour that objectified labour can be
preserved or increased’.139 He refers to living labour as the ‘subject’ of this
process – since no value can be created without it – while showing that living
labour becomes subsumed by objectified labour: ‘A further antithesis is this:
in contrast to money (or value in general) as objectified labour, labour capacity
appears as a capacity of the living subject; the former is past labour, labour
already performed, the latter is future labour, whose existence can only be
the living activity, the currently present activity of the living subject itself’.140
Marx has entered into the heart of the process of production by showing what
occurs within the factory. Not only are products being produced by workers,
the workers themselves become transformed from living, creative, subjective
agents into mere appendages of the machine. A split occurs between the sub-
jectivity of the labourer and the labour that they perform. Marx describes this
split in terms that recall, but also further extend, his earlier formulations of
1844:
The labour goes over from the form of activity to the form of being, the
form of the object. As alteration of the object it alters its own shape. The
form-giving activity consumes the object and itself; it forms the object and
materializes itself; it consumes itself in its subjective form as activity and
138.â•‡ This is actually how the 1861–3 manuscript begins. The subject-matter of this
section does not appear in A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, nor is it
explicitly spelled out in the Grundrisse. It largely corresponds to what later becomes
Part Two of Volume I of Capital, ‘The Transformation of Money into Capital’.
139.â•‡ Marx 1988, p. 36.
140.â•‡ Marx 1988, p. 41.
consumes the objective character of the object, i.e., it abolishes the object’s
indifference towards the purpose of the labour.141
By directly exploring the contradictions internal to the capitalist labour-

process, what becomes visible is the specific kind of labour that creates value.
This becomes of critical importance in his criticism of Ricardo. Whereas, prior
to 1861, Marx often credited Ricardo for pinpointing the determination of
value by labour-time, he now emphasises his radical departure from him.
Marx indicates that positing labour as the source of value fails to get to the
critical issue – the kind of labour that creates value. When the latter is passed
over, it becomes hard to see why living labour serves the substance of value.
Marx is suggesting that it is not enough to ameliorate the quantitative inequi-
ties associated with the determination of value by labour-time; instead, what
is most needed is to qualitatively eliminate the kind of labour that creates and
constitutes value in the first place.
This has important ramifications for a Marxian understanding of a post-
capitalist society. This can best be discerned when Marx’s critique of Ricardo
and post-Ricardians is considered in light of his preceding discussion in ‘The
Production Process of Capital’.142 Marx argues that Ricardo’s failure to grasp
the nature of the labour that creates value leads to an erroneous theory of
money. Ricardo argues that money, like other market-phenomena, only appears
to contradict the determination of value by labour-time insofar as its value is
determined by supply and demand, instead of by the amount of labour-time
that it takes to produce it. Ricardo seeks to dispel what he considers this false
appearance by arguing that money, like the market-price of a commodity, is
ultimately reducible to the determination of value by labour-time. He ‘directly
seeks to prove the congruity of the economic categories with one another’.143
By reducing market-phenomena to the determination of value in an unme-
diated fashion, Ricardo posits an identity of essence and appearance. Marx
argues that this is even truer of John Stuart Mill, who ‘transforms the unity of
opposites into the direct identity of opposites’.144
141.â•‡ Marx 1988, p. 59.

142.â•‡ The fact that Marx’s critique of Ricardo and the post-Ricardians was separated
out from the rest of the manuscript of 1861–3 and published as Theories of Surplus Value
has made it difficult to appreciate the central point he was driving at in his critique of
these and other theorists – namely, that a failure to specify the form of value results
from keeping one’s conceptual distance from the standpoint of the worker or what
happens to the worker inside the factory.
143.â•‡ Marx 1989a, p. 390.
144.â•‡ Marx 1989b, p. 278. See also Marx 1989b, p. 290: ‘The logic is always the same.
If a relationship includes opposites, it comprises not only opposites but also the unity
of opposites. It is therefore a unity without opposites. This is Mill’s logic, by which he
138 • Chapter Two
Marx does not deny that the determination of value by labour-time is an

essential economic category of capitalism, which is hidden and distorted by
transactions on the phenomenal level of the market. What he denies is that
there is a direct, unmediated connection between the law of value and market-
phenomena. Prices must diverge from value, Marx contends, because of the
specific kind of labour that creates value – abstract or indirectly social labour.
Since ‘the definite, particular labour of the private individual must manifest
itself as its opposite, as equal, necessary, general labour’,145 the exchange-value
of the commodity obtains an independent existence in money. Exchange-values
calculated in money, or price, can therefore never be directly reduced to the
commodity’s ‘real’ value. While the sum of all prices is equal to the sum of all
values, the price of any given commodity generally diverges from its value,
because abstract labour is measured by a social average that is constantly fluc-
tuating and changing, especially because of technological innovation. Value
becomes price through a transformation into opposite; the two are not identical,
even though they exist in a state of dialectical unity.
The reason why Ricardo and the neo-Ricardians force the opposites of price
and value146 into an unmediated unity is that they fail to comprehend the his-
torical specificity of value-creating labour. They do not grasp that the concrete
labour of individuals in capitalist society must be represented in terms of its
‘immediate opposite, abstract, general labour’. Essence and appearance can-
not be made to coincide so long as abstract or alienated labour persists, since
‘Only by its alienation does individual labour manifest itself as its opposite’.147
By failing to grasp this, Ricardo and his school present ’the whole bour-
geois system of economy as subject to one fundamental law, and extract the
quintessence out of the divergency and diversity of the various phenomena’.148
While this has the advantage of concentrating attention on the determina-
tion of value by labour-time, it is outweighed by its disadvantages: ‘As the
work proceeds, there is no further development. Where it does not consist of
a monotonous formal application of the same principles to various extraneous
matters, or of polemical vindication of these principles, there is only repeti-
tion or amplification’.149
eliminates the “contradictions”.’ Later, in Volume I of Capital, Marx ties this criticism
to categories from Hegel’s Logic.
145.â•‡ Marx 1989b, p. 317.
146.â•‡ Marx will also contend that this is true of their understanding of the relation
of surplus-value and profit as well.
147.â•‡ Marx 1989b, p. 323.
148.â•‡ Marx 1989a, p. 394.
149.â•‡ Marx 1989a, pp. 394–5. Marx’s comments bring to mind Hegel’s criticism of
formal abstraction in the Phenomenology of Spirit: ‘The Idea, which is of course true
Although Marx states that he intends to focus on the classical political econ-
omists like Smith, Ricardo and Mill and not on the radical or socialist think-
ers who were influenced by them, he does venture into a critical discussion
of the latter. He does not dispute the contention of an important American
advocate of free trade and critic of Ricardo, Henry Charles Carey, that Ricar-
do’s economic theories made him ‘a father of communism’ in many respects.150
The manuscript of 1861–3 also contains an extended section on ‘Proletarian
Opposition on the Basis of Ricardo’, in which he discusses such thinkers as
Thomas Hodgskin, George Ramsey, and Richard Jones.151 Marx’s analysis
indicates that it should come as no surprise that the socialist followers of
Ricardo adopted the notion that money could be replaced by another means
of measuring the quantity of labour-time, such as time-chits or labour-tokens.
They found no fault with Ricardo’s purely quantitative analysis of value-
production since they also did not ask the question of what specific kind
of labour creates value. Like Ricardo, the post-Ricardian socialists simply
assumed that it was a natural property of labour to serve as the substance of
value. For this reason, they thought it is possible to replace money by a direct
determination of value by labour-time, instead of relying on the indirect
medium of price-formation on the market. Marx contends that they shared
with Ricardo a failure to understand that money – or any alternative medium
that is adopted as a universal equivalent – is not just the expression of a quan-
tity of labour-time, but of a specific quality of labour, namely, abstract labour
denuded of its particularity. This is why they held that the ills of capitalism
could be remedied by eliminating the ‘anarchy’ of the market, such as by
replacing money with labour-tokens.
Marx does not share their conception of the alternative to capitalism because
he does not hold that price-formation on the market is ‘arbitrary’ and con-
tingent whereas value-production is predictable and transparent. The arbi-
trary and contingent nature of market-phenomena is itself a reflection of the
irrational and indirect nature of value-production. Instead of contrasting the
transparency of value-production to the opaqueness of market-transactions,
Marx sees both of these as irrational and contradictory forms. As long as the
production-relations of capitalism are presupposed as natural and eternal, it
is impossible to overcome the irrational and crisis-ridden nature of capital:
enough on its own account, remains in effect always in its primitive condition, if
its development involves nothing more than this sort of repetition of the same for-
mulaâ•›.â•›.â•›.â•›Rather it is a monochromatic formalism which only arrives at the differentia-
tion of its material since this has been already provided and is by now familiar’. See
Hegel 1977, p. 9.
150.â•‡ Marx 1989a, p. 392.
151.â•‡ See Marx 1991, pp. 253–371.
140 • Chapter Two
‘[I]t is quite clear, that between the starting-point, the prerequisite capital,
and the time of its return at the end of one of these periods, great catastrophes
must occur and elements of crisis must have gathered and developed, and
these cannot in any way be dismissed by the pitiful proposition that products
exchange for product’.152 As Marx also puts it, ‘Crisis is nothing but the forc-
ible assertion of the unity of phases of the production process which have
become independent of each other’.153
Ricardo himself, Marx notes, denies the possibility of crises that are endemic
to value-production154 because he posits an identity between production
and consumption, as well as between purchase and sale. This implies that
society,
as if according to a plan, distributes its means of production and productive
forces in the degree and measure which is required for the fulfilment of the
various social needs, so that each sphere of production receives the quota of
social capital required to satisfy the corresponding need. This fiction arises
entirely from the inability to grasp the specific form of bourgeois production
and this inability in turn arises from the obsession that bourgeois production
is production as such, just like a man who believes in a particular religion and
sees it as the religion, and everything outside of it only as false religions.155
Marx’s statement that Ricardo assumes that the disproportionalities of value-

production can be smoothed out ‘as if according to a plan’ is striking in light
of the experience of the state-controlled ‘planned’ economies in the USSR and
elsewhere in the twentieth century. By 1943, Soviet economists admitted that
the law of value continued to operate in their putatively ‘socialist’ society.
They contended, however, that because of state-planning the disproportion-
alities inherent in value-production had been overcome.156 That they failed to
succeed in actually overcoming such disproportionalities is rather clear, given
the history of the Soviet economy. Similar to the socialist neo-Ricardians of
the nineteenth century subject to Marx’s critiques, they thought it was pos-
152.â•‡ Marx 1989b, p. 126.

153.â•‡ Marx 1989b, p. 140.
154.â•‡ Ricardo held that economic crises are merely an exogenous hangover of feudal
appendages, such as legislation preventing free trade and competition.
155.â•‡ Marx 1989b, p. 158.
156.â•‡ See the anonymous article ‘Teaching of Economics in the Soviet Union’, which
was translated and published in the American Economic Review, vol. 34, no. 3 (September
1944), pp. 501–30. The article originally appeared in the Russian journal Pod Zname-
nem Marxizma, nos. 7–8 (1943). Whereas previously Soviet textbooks had argued that
the law of value did not operate under socialism, the article now proclaimed that it
was an operative principle of the Soviet economy. For the debate touched off by this
declaration, see Dunayevskaya 1944; Baran 1944; Lange 1945; and Rogin 1945.
sible to eliminate indirect and ‘anarchic’ market-relations while maintaining

a system of value-production based on indirectly social labour.157
Marx’s discussion lends credence to Postone’s contention that Marx’s cri-
tique of capital applies to what he calls ‘traditional’ or ‘Ricardian Marxism’.158
The manuscript of 1861–3 indicates that Marx’s criticism of Ricardo and the
neo-Ricardians sheds illumination on the shortcomings of various ‘alterna-
tives’ to capitalism proposed or implemented during the twentieth century.
In fact, Marx goes so far as to view various socialist tendencies as expressing
the logic of capital. This is particularly evident when he takes issue with those
who confuse the abolition of interest-bearing or monetary capital with the
elimination of the capitalist mode of production. He writes,
It is thus clear why superficial criticism – in exactly the same way as it wants
[to maintain] commodities and combats money – now turns its wisdom and
reforming zeal against interest-bearing capital without touching upon real
capitalist production, but merely attacking one of its consequences. This
polemic against interest-bearing capital, undertaken from the standpoint of
capitalist production, a polemic which today parades as ‘socialism’, occurs,
incidentally, as a phase in the development of capital itselfâ•›.â•›.â•›.159
The 1861–3 draft of Capital also introduces a new concept that is not explicitly
developed in the Grundrisse – commodity-fetishism, although he does not
actually employ the term ‘fetish’ or ‘fetishism’ at this stage.160 Marx argues
that in capitalism ‘the social character of labour “manifests itself” in a per-
verted form – as the “property” of things: that a social relation appears as
a relation between things (between products, value in use, commodities)’.161
157.â•‡ The Soviet theoreticians claimed that their society had eliminated indirectly
social labour, since the economy was governed by a central plan; however, that claim
was controverted by their own admission that value-production continued to operate
in it. That they neglected to acknowledge the inherently self-contradictory nature of
such a position had less to do with their lack of skills in formal logic than their effort
to produce an apologia and justification for existing conditions in the USSR.
158.â•‡ I am referring only to Postone’s contention that many twentieth-century Marx-
ists were ‘Ricardian’ insofar as they focused on the magnitude of value rather than on
the dual character of labour. As indicated above, I do not share his view that those who
consider workers as revolutionary subjects are ‘Ricardian Marxists’ – especially since
thinkers in the tradition of ‘Marxist-Humanism’ long ago emphasised the centrality
of the dual character of labour while affirming the importance of subjective forces of
resistance. For more on this, see Hudis 1995 and Hudis 2004c.
159.â•‡ Marx 1989b, pp. 452–3.
160.â•‡ Although the concept is not spelled out in the Grundrisse, Marx does refer to
the phenomena of social relations appearing in ‘perverted’ form several times in it
as well as in A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy. See Marx 1987a, pp.
275–6 and pp. 289–90.
161.â•‡ Marx 1989b, p. 317.
142 • Chapter Two
This is not simply an illusory appearance. Social labour necessarily appears as

a property of things because the labour that creates value, abstract or alien-
ated labour, is homogeneous and thing-like.
Marx notes, ‘As a commodity, a commodity can only express its value
in other commodities, since general labour time does not exist for it as a
commodity’.162 Labour-time serves as the determination of value only when it
exists in an objectified form, in the shape of a thing or a commodity. It therefore
appears that what establishes the exchangeability of a given set of commodi-
ties is their thing-like nature – their natural properties. Value appears as a
property of the object. Value, however, is not a property of objects but ‘only
a representation in objects, an objective expression, of a relation between men, a
social relation, the relationship of men to their reciprocal productive activity’.163
It appears that value is an attribute of the things-in-themselves, instead of a
representation of specific social relations. Value-production becomes naturalised
in appearing to be a property of things-in-themselves. And it must appear this
way so long as the peculiar social form of labour that characterises capitalism
remains intact. Here we see why so many defenders and even critics of capi-
talism assume that value-production is ‘natural’.164
Marx is engaging in a kind of phenomenological reduction in showing
that what appears to exist independently of us is actually a representation
of our human relations. As he puts it, ‘Thus commodities, things in general,
have value only because they represent human labour, not in so far as they are
things in themselves, but in so far as they are incarnations of social labour’.165
The fetishism of viewing the commodity as a thing-in-itself, which he consid-
ers ‘perverse’,166 is inevitable so long as value-production persists.
Marx is not arguing that fetishism is simply a mental defect that can be
stripped away by enlightened critique. Although fetishising the products of
our own creation is surely alienated, it cannot be avoided so long as the dis-
162.â•‡ Marx 1989b, p. 329.

163.â•‡ Marx 1989b, p. 334. My emphasis.
164.â•‡ Marx expresses this as follows: ‘Thus the participants in capitalist production
live in a bewitched world and their own relationships appear to them as properties of
things, as properties of the material elements of production’. See Marx 1991, p. 514.
165.â•‡ Marx 1989b, p. 336.
166.â•‡ The German term used by Marx is verkehrt, which can also be translated as
‘inverted’ or ‘turned upside down.’ It can also be rendered as ‘mad’. For Marx, a
world in which the relation of subject and predicate is inverted through a process
in which we become subordinated to the products of our own creation is indeed a
mad world.
torted system of value-production is maintained. Marx takes issue with fel-

low socialists on this:
The capitalist, as capitalist, is simply the personification of capital, that
creation of labour endowed with its own will and personality which
stands in opposition to labour. Hodgskin regards this as a pure subjective
illusion which conceals the deceit and interests of the exploiting classes.
He does not see that the way of looking at things arises from out of the
actual relationship itself; the latter is not the expression of the former, but
vice versa. In the same way, English socialists say: ‘We need capital, but
not the capitalist.’167
Marx does not oppose the capitalists on the grounds that they treat human-
beings as objects – as if they had any choice in the matter. Capitalists treat
human-beings as objects insofar as capital remains the defining principle
of social organisation. In arguing that human relations appear as relations
between things because that is what they truly are in capitalism, Marx is
fully breaking from what he considers to be the illusions of both Ricardo
and the neo-Ricardian socialists. Marx therefore does not propose replac-
ing the capitalists with some other agency that can more rationally allocate
resources according to the determination of labour-time. Instead, he writes:
‘Where labour is communal, the relations of men in their social production
do not manifest themselves as “values” of “things”.’168 Marx’s critique of
other theorists in the manuscript of 1861–3 thus speaks directly to his view
of a postcapitalist society.
There are several other ways in which the 1861–3 draft speaks to the nature
of a postcapitalist society. Marx returns to and further develops his argument
from the Grundrisse that capitalism stimulates the development of new needs
and capacities that provide a material foundation for a higher form of social
existence. He writes,
But it is a law of the development of human nature that once the satisfaction
of a certain sphere of needs has been assured new needs are set free, created.
Therefore when capital pushes labour time beyond the level set for the
satisfaction of the worker’s natural needs, it impels a greater division of social
labour – the labour of society as a whole – a greater diversity of production,
an extension of the sphere of social needs and the means for their satisfaction,
and therefore also impels the development of human productive capacity
167.â•‡ Marx 1989b, p. 429.

168.â•‡ Marx 1989b, pp. 316–17.
144 • Chapter Two
and thereby the activation of human dispositions in fresh directions. But

just as surplus labour time is a condition for free time, this extension of the
sphere of needs and the means for their satisfaction is conditioned by the
worker’s being chained to the necessary requirements of his life.169
Marx is emphasising the contradictory character of capitalism’s development

of new needs and capacities – something that is not as explicitly spelled out
in the Grundrisse, which tended to emphasise capital’s positive contributions.
While capital ‘activates’ new ‘dispositions in fresh directions’, the contrary
development also occurs: ‘Once the commodity becomes the general form of
the product, or production takes place on the basis of exchange value and
therefore of the exchange of commodities, the production of each individual,
first of all, becomes one-sided, whereas his needs are many-sided’.170 Marx is
acknowledging that, with the development of capitalism, workers (as well as
others) ‘loses room for intellectual development, for that is time’.171 People
are deprived of a host of ‘pleasures of life’, leading to ‘the vacuity of their
lives.’172 However, he contends, ‘[A]lthough at first the development of the
capacities of the human species takes place at the cost of the majority of
human individuals and whole human classes, in the end it breaks through
this contradiction and coincides with the development of the individual; the
higher development of individuality is thus only achieved by a historical
process during which individuals are sacrificed’.173
Hence, as Marx develops his discussion of the contradictions inherent to
capital’s generation of new needs and capacities, he looks ahead to what
would characterise a postcapitalist society once such contradictions are
transcended:
Time of labour, even if exchange value is eliminated, always remains the
creative substance of wealth and the measure of the cost of its production.
But free time, disposable time, is wealth itself, partly for the enjoyment of the
product, partly for free activity which – unlike labour – is not determined by
a compelling extraneous purpose which must be fulfilled, and the fulfilment
of which is regarded as a natural necessity or a social duty, according to
one’s inclination.174
169.â•‡ Marx 1988, p. 199.

170.â•‡ Marx 1988, p. 298.
171.â•‡ Marx 1988, p. 301.
172.â•‡ Marx 1988, p. 302.
173.â•‡ Marx 1989a, p. 348.
174.â•‡ Marx 1989b, p. 391.
In a new, postcapitalist society, in which exchange-value is ‘eliminated’, the

amount of time that individuals spend on the production and reproduction
of basic necessities will remain an important factor. However, such labour-
time – and indeed labour-time in general – will cease to be the determining
principle governing such a society. Labour that is engaged in material pro-
duction and reproduction, even when creating wealth, instead of value, is still
determined by ‘extraneous’ purposes insofar as it is subject to some degree
of natural necessity. Human activity can therefore not be its own end where
labour remains the determining principle of social reproduction. A truly free
society, according to Marx, is not governed by labour-time engaged in mate-
rial production but by free time – the time taken to express the totality of
one’s sensuous and intellectual capacities. Marx spells out the nature of such
a new society thusly:
It is self-evident that if time of labour is reduced to a normal length and,
furthermore, labour is no longer performed for someone else, but for myself,
and, at the same time, the social contradictions between master and men, etc.,
being abolished, it acquires a quite different, a free character, it becomes real
social labour, and finally the basis of disposable time – the time of labour of
a man who also has disposable time must be of a much higher quality than
that of the beast of burden.175
The length of labour-time dramatically declines in a new society at the same

time as its character is qualitatively transformed with the abolition of class-
divisions and social domination. What provides the material condition for
this reduction of labour-time to a minimum is the development of capital
itself, which relentlessly increases labour’s productivity as it seeks to aug-
ment value. At the same time, however, capital’s thirst for self-expansion is
inseparable from a drive to appropriate ever-more unpaid hours of living
labour. To put an end to this contradictory process, a new kind or form of
labour and human activity is needed. Marx writes, ‘The capitalist mode of
production disappears with the form of alienation which the various aspects
of social labour bear to one another and which is represented in capital’.176
Therefore, he concludes, ‘Just as one should not think of sudden changes
and sharply delineated periods in considering the succession of the differ-
ent geological formations, so also in the case of the creation of the different
economic formations of society’.177
175.â•‡ Ibid.
176.â•‡ Marx 1989b, p. 446.
177.â•‡ Marx 1991, p. 442.
146 • Chapter Two
Nevertheless, while the new society emerges from within the womb of the
old one, the former represents a qualitative break and leap from the latter.
Marx never ceases to stress the radically different way in which time would
be treated in the new society: ‘But time is in fact the active existence of the
human being. It is not only the measure of human life. It is the space for its
development’.178
178.â•‡ Marx 1989b, p. 493.

Chapter Three
The Vision of the New Society in Marx’s Capital
Volume I of Capital
Volume I of Capital is Marx’s most important work
and represents the culmination of over a quarter-
century of intense research and philosophical
development. It consists of an analysis of capitalist
production and only capitalist production. Since its
purpose is to discern the ‘law of motion’ of existing
society, it might seem to have little to say about a
future society. Some of Marx’s own words tend to
reinforce this perception. His ‘Postface to the Sec-
ond Edition’ notes that a reviewer of the first edi-
tion ‘reproaches me for, on the one hand, treating
economics metaphysically, and, on the other hand –
imagine this! – confining myself merely to the critical
analysis of the actual facts, instead of writing recipes
(Comtist ones?) for the cook-shops of the future’.1
At the same time, Marx does not deny that his cri-
tique of capitalism is intended at least to indicate or
intimate its future transcendence. In this regard, he
cites positively the review by the Russian economist
I.I. Kaufman, who wrote, ‘For [Marx] it is quite
enough, if he proves, at the same time, both the neces-
sity of the present order of things and the necessity of
1.â•‡ Marx 1976e, p. 99. The ‘Postface to the Second [German] Edition’ is dated Janu-
ary 1873. At the time Marx was also preparing the French edition of Capital, which
appeared in serialised form between 1872–5. These editions, especially the French
edition, introduced several important changes and additions to the first German
edition of 1867.
148 • Chapter Three
another order into which they first must inevitably pass over, and it is a mat-
ter of indifference whether men believe or do not believe, whether they are
conscious of it or not’.2 Thus, I will be arguing that while the scope of Capital
is restricted to an analysis of capitalism, an examination of its most important
theoretical concepts shows that Marx’s most important work contains some
important material regarding his view of a postcapitalist society.
One of the most fundamental concepts in Capital, which is a novel theoreti-
cal development as compared with his earlier work, is that Marx explicitly
distinguishes between exchange-value and value.3 As we have seen, Marx’s
previous work treated exchange-value and value as more or less interchange-
able.4 This was even true as late as the first edition of Volume I of Capital, pub-
lished in 1867. In contrast, the second German edition of 1872 states, ‘Exchange
value cannot be anything other than the mode of expression, the “form of
appearance” [Erscheinungsform] of a content distinguishable from it’.5 Marx
adds, ‘The progress of the investigation will lead us back to exchange-value
as the necessary mode of expression, or form of appearance, of value. For the
present, however, we must consider the nature of value independently of its
form of appearance’.6
Why does Marx make this explicit distinction between exchange-value and
value, and what is its significance? The answer lies in the peculiar or spe-
cific nature of value-production itself. Value, Marx writes, ‘does not have its
description branded on its forehead’.7 Value does not exist on its own account,
independently of the products in which it is embodied. It first appears as a
quantitative relationship – one commodity can be exchanged for another
because both contain equal quantities or amounts of (socially average) labour-
time. Value is therefore never immediately visible: it necessarily first appears
as exchange-value, as a quantitative relation between things. However, the
exchange of things is not only a quantitative relation, since there must be
a quality common to the things that can enable them to be exchanged for
one another. Without a commensurate quality or substance, the exchange of
2.â•‡ Marx 1976e, p. 101.

3.â•‡ For an important discussion of this issue, see Kliman 2000.
4.â•‡ As late as the first (1867) edition of the first volume, Marx writes, ‘When we
employ the word value with no additional determination, we refer always to exchange
value [Wenn wir künftig das Wort ‘werth’ ohne weitere Bestimmung brauchen, so handelt
es sich immer vom Tauschwerth]’. See Marx 1983b, p. 19. With the second German edi-
tion of 1872 Marx makes a clear distinction between exchange-value and value, even
though it is implied in the 1867 edition.
5.â•‡ Marx 1976e, p. 127.
6.â•‡ Marx 1976e, p. 128.
7.â•‡ Marx 1976e, p. 167.
The Vision of the New Society in Marx’s Capital • 149
discrete products is not possible.8 Two commodities can enter into a quantita-
tive relation only if they share a common quality. This quality, Marx shows, is
abstract or homogenous labour: ‘Equality in the full sense between different
kinds of labour can be arrived at only if we abstract from their real inequality,
if we reduce them to the characteristic they have in common, that of being
the expenditure of human labour power, of human labour in the abstract’.9
Abstract labour – labour expended without regard for the usefulness or use-
value of the product – is the substance of value. But, since abstract labour is
objectified in products, value first appears (and must appear) as a quantitative
relationship between products – as exchange-value. So overpowering is this
appearance that Marx himself does not explicitly delineate exchange-value,
with its specific forms of value, as distinct from value itself, until relatively late
in his development of Capital.
Marx contends that neither the greatest philosophers, such as Aristotle,
nor the greatest classical political economists, such as Ricardo, were able to
go beyond the appearance of value-in-exchange to the examination of value
itself.10 This limitation has objective roots. It flows from the fact that value ‘can
only appear in the social relation between commodity and commodity’.11 The
essence, value, appears, and must appear, as exchange-value. Since ‘reflection
begins post-festum, and therefore with the results of the process of develop-
ment ready at hand’,12 it is virtually inescapable, at least initially, to conflate
value with exchange-value. So objective is this conceptual barrier that, as we
have seen, even Marx does not explicitly single out the distinction between
exchange-value and value in The Poverty of Philosophy, the Grundrisse, or
the 1861–3 draft of Capital. It is only with Chapter One of Capital that Marx
writes,
â•‡ 8.â•‡ Marx quotes Aristotle on this: ‘There can be no exchange without equality, and
no equality without commensurability’. See Marx 1986e, p. 151. See also Aristotle
2002, p. 90 [1133b16–19]: ‘So the currency, like a unit of measure, equalises things by
making them commensurable, for there would be no community if there were not
exchange, and no exchange if there was not equality, and no equality if there were
not commensurability’.
â•‡ 9.â•‡ Marx 1976e, p. 166. See also Marx 1976e, pp. 140–1: ‘It is overlooked that the
magnitudes of different things only become comparable in quantitative terms when
they have been reduced to the same unit. Only as expressions of the same unit do
they have a common denominator, and are therefore commensurable magnitudes’.
10.â•‡ See Marx 1976e, p. 151: ‘Aristotle therefore himself tells us what prevented any
further analysis: the concept of value. What is the homogenous element, i.e. the com-
mon substance, which the house represents from the point of view of the bed, in the
value expression for the bed? Such a thing, in truth, cannot exist, says Aristotle’.
11.â•‡ Marx 1976e, p. 139.
12.â•‡ Marx 1976e, p. 168.
When at the beginning of this chapter, we said in the customary manner

that a commodity is both a use value and an exchange value, this was,
strictly speaking, wrong. A commodity is a use value or object of utility,
and a ‘value’. It appears as the twofold thing it really is as soon as its value
possesses its own particular form of manifestation, which is distinct from
its natural form. The form of manifestation is exchange value, and the
commodity never has this form when looked at in isolation, but only when
it is in a value-relation or an exchange relation with a second commodity
of a different kind.13
How does Marx finally get to specify explicitly the difference between
exchange-value and value, and how does it impact his understanding of
the alternative to capitalism? Marx proceeds phenomenologically, by begin-
ning with the appearance of value in the relation between discrete commodi-
ties. After delineating the quantitative determination of value (two different
commodities can be exchanged for each other insofar as they contain equal
amounts of socially-necessary labour-time), he probes into the conditions that
make this exchange possible. He discovers that the condition for the possibil-
ity of magnitudes of labour-time to be exchanged for one another is a com-
mon quality or element. That common element is abstract or undifferentiated
labour. Marx’s delineation of the dual character of labour – which he calls
his unique contribution to the critique of political economy14 – brings to light
the substance of value, abstract labour. That in turn makes it possible to con-
ceptualise value, independently of its form of appearance. He writes, ‘In fact,
we started from exchange value, or the exchange relation of commodities, in
order to track down the value that lay hidden within it’.15
The movement from exchange-value (appearance) to value (essence) is not
only the course by which Marx structures his argument, but it also corresponds
to the historical development of economics. Economic theory develops from
13.â•‡ Marx 1976e, p. 152. Aristotle explicitly distinguishes between the ‘natural’ form
of wealth and its ‘social’ form, the latter which he derides as unnatural, in Book I of
the Politics: ‘Natural wealth acquisition is a part of household management, whereas
commerce has to do with the production of goods, not in the full sense, but through
their exchangeâ•›.â•›.â•›.â•›The wealth that derives from this kind of [unnatural] wealth acquisi-
tion is without limit’. See Aristotle 1998, p. 17 [1257b19–25] (emphasis in original). By
failing to distinguish between exchange-value and value, however, Aristotle proved
unable to grasp or delineate the forms of value.
14.â•‡ Marx 1976e, p. 132: ‘I was the first to point out and examine critically this
twofold nature of the labour contained in commodities’. To my knowledge, this is
the only time that Marx uses the first person in Capital, aside from the prefaces and
postfaces.
15.â•‡ Marx 1976e, p. 139.
classical political economy’s emphasis on the quantitative determination of

value, in which commodities exchange against one another based on given
magnitudes of labour-time they embody, to Marx’s emphasis on the kind of
labour that enables this exchange to occur – abstract, homogenous labour.
The development from classical political economy to Marx’s own critique of
political economy is a movement from quantity to quality, from the appear-
ance of exchangeability to the identification of the conditions that make such
exchangeability possible. Marx does not arrive at this result by jumping to the
absolute like a shot out of a pistol, which Hegel famously warned us against.
Instead, he traverses the pathway initially laid out by classical political econ-
omy by beginning with the appearance of value as exchange-value and then
proceeding to discover what makes this quantitative relation possible. By
explicitly distinguishing value from exchange-value, he succeeds in overcom-
ing the historical limits reached by classical-political economy.
It bears repeating that value cannot be conceptualised in an unmediated
fashion, without going through a conceptual detour that proceeds from appear-
ance, because value shows itself in the exchange-relation of commodity to
commodity. We must begin with the form of appearance of exchange-value
and ‘track down’ the value-relation that is immanent in it. It is not possible to
proceed the other way around, by proceeding from value to exchange-value,
because the essence (value) is not immediately accessible. However, the fact
that the ‘identical social substance’ that enables one commodity to exchange
for another can be grasped only by proceeding from the exchange-relation to
that which makes exchange possible carries with it a grave risk: namely, that
consciousness will get stuck in the detour by stopping at the phenomenal
manifestation of value without inquiring into the conditions of its possibility.
Since value can only show itself as a social relation between one commodity
and another, it all too readily appears that relations of exchange are responsible
for value-production. So powerful is that appearance that even Marx does not
explicitly pose the difference between exchange-value and value itself until
quite late in the development of Capital.
That Marx ultimately makes this distinction is of critical importance, since
it suggests that attempting to ameliorate the deleterious aspect of value-
production by altering the exchange-relation is fundamentally flawed. Since
exchange-value is a manifestation of value, whose substance is abstract labour,
the essential problem of capitalist production can be addressed only by alter-
ing the nature of the labour-process itself.
Marx points to this when he writes, ‘Our analysis has shown that the form
of value, that is, the expression of the value of a commodity, arises from the
nature of commodity-value, as opposed to value and its magnitude arising
from their mode of expression as exchange-value’.16 This helps to illumi-

nate why many fail to correctly identify the central problem of capitalism –
including some of its most vociferous critics. Since value must show itself as
exchange-value, it appears that uprooting value-production depends upon
altering relations of exchange. However, altering relations of exchange in lieu
of changing conditions of labour cannot eliminate value-production, even
though value-production is inseparable from relations of exchange. While
altering the exchange-relation can influence the quantitative determina-
tion of value, it cannot change its qualitative determination, the substance of
value itself. Yet the peculiar nature of capitalism’s social relations, in which
the substance of value appears in quantitative proportions in the exchange
of products, makes it appear as if altering the exchange-relation is of cardinal
importance. In sum, it lies in the very nature of capitalist value-production
that its true nature will be misunderstood. Mystification is inseparable from the
very existence of the value-form.
As Marx will indicate throughout Capital, the fundamental problem of capi-
talism is not its exchange-relations as much as the specific form assumed by
labour – abstract or alienated labour. For this reason, he is not satisfied with the
classical political economists’ discovery that labour is the source of all value.
Far more important, Marx argues, is the kind of labour that creates value and
serves as its substance. Only when this is recognised is it possible to focus on
the social relation that defines capitalism and that needs to be uprooted. He
insists, ‘It is not sufficient to reduce the commodity to “labour”; labour must
be broken down into its twofold form – on the one hand, into concrete labour
in the use-values of the commodity, and on the other hand, into socially necessary
labour as calculated in exchange value’.17 It is all too easy to hold stubbornly
to a vantage-point that never gets to the critical issue, precisely because of
the specific nature of value-production itself. As Marx puts it, ‘But it does
not occur to the economists that a purely quantitative distinction between the
kinds of labour presupposes their qualitative unity or equality, and therefore
their reduction to abstract human labour’.18
Another major conceptual innovation in Capital is its discussion of com-
modity-fetishism. While Marx refers implicitly to the fetishism of commodi-
ties a number of times in his earlier work, it is only in Capital that he devotes
a full section (in the first chapter) to delineating it.19 Georg Lukács was one of
the first post-Marx Marxists to call attention to its central importance:
16.â•‡ Marx 1976e, p. 152.

17.â•‡ Marx 1976e, p. 992.
18.â•‡ Marx 1976e, p. 173.
19.â•‡ Although the first German edition of 1867 discussed commodity-fetishism, it
did not contain the section entitled ‘The Fetishism of the Commodity and its Secret.’
It has often been claimed – and not without a certain justification – that
the famous chapter in Hegel’s Logic treating of Being, Non-Being, and
Becoming contains the whole of his philosophy. It might be claimed with
perhaps equal justification that the chapter dealing with the fetish character
of the commodity, contains within itself the whole of historical materialism
and the whole self-knowledge of the proletariat seen as the knowledge of
capitalist society.20
The basis of commodity-fetishism is that value appears to be an attribute of

the physical or thing-like character of products of labour. Marx writes, ‘The
fetishism peculiar to the capitalist mode of productionâ•›.â•›.â•›.â•›consists in regard-
ing economic categories, such as being a commodity or productive labour, as
qualities inherent in the material incarnations of these formal determinations
of categories’.21 Marx asks why this ‘folly of identifying a specific social rela-
tionship of production with the thing-like qualities of certain articles’22 arises.
‘Whence, then, arises the enigmatic character of the product of labour, as
soon as it assumes the form of a commodity?’23 Marx provides the follow-
ing answer:
Clearly, it arises from this form itself. The equality of the kinds of human
labour takes on a physical form in the equal objectivity of the products of
labour as values; the measure of the expenditure of human labour-power by
its duration takes on the form of the magnitude of the value of the products
of labour; and finally the relationships between the producers, within which
the social characteristics of their labours are manifested, take on the form
of a social relation between the products of labour.24
Marx is here returning to and deepening a concept that was integral to his
work from as early as 1843–4 – the inversion of subject and predicate. Value
is a product of a definite form of human labour; it is the predicate of human
activity. So why does value take on a life of its own, insofar as it appears to
be the property of the thing-like character of objects? Why does the predicate
come to dominate the subject, the active agents who create value in the first
place? Why is it that ‘Their own movement within society has for them the
For an English translation of the original 1867 version of Chapter One of Capital, see
Marx 1976f, pp. 1–78.
20.â•‡ Lukács 1968, p. 170.
21.â•‡ Marx 1976e, p. 1046. This is from the famous planned ‘Chapter Six’ of Capital,
entitled ‘Results of the Immediate Process of Production’.
22.â•‡ Marx 1976e, p. 998.
23.â•‡ Marx 1976e, p. 164.
24.â•‡ Ibid.
form of a movement made by things, and these things far from being under
their control, in fact control them’?25
Marx’s answer is that the mysterious character of the product of labour,
wherein the product is the subject instead of the predicate, arises from the
form of the commodity itself – from the fact that value appears in the form
of a relation between products of labour that are exchanged for one another.
The product appears as the active agent because its value can only show itself
as an exchange-relation between the products. Hence, the real subject, the
labour that assumes a peculiar social form and is responsible for the ability
of the products to exchange against one another, is rendered invisible by the
necessity for value to appear as a relation between things, as exchange-value –
even though value itself has nothing to do with the physical properties of
these things.
In sum, the subject appears to be the predicate and the predicate appears to
be the subject because that is how things really are in capitalist society. Marx
writes, ‘To the producers, therefore, the social relations between their private
labours appear as what they are, i.e. they do not appear as direct social rela-
tions between persons in their work, but rather as material relations between
persons and social relations between things’.26
The fetishism of commodities is no mere illusion that can be stripped away
by an Enlightenment-style critique. It is a valid and adequate form of conscious-
ness corresponding to the actual conditions of capitalist production. Abstract
labour, the equality of all labours, takes on a physical form in being materia-
lised or objectified in a commodity. The value of the commodity is measured
by the magnitude of time that it takes to create it. Its value cannot be discerned
independently of this quantitative measurement. Hence, the relation of pro-
ducers that create value appears as a property of the thing-like character of
the commodities and not of their own labour. Fetishism arises from the neces-
sity for value to assume a form of appearance that is contrary to its essence.
This mystified form of appearance is adequate to its concept, for it corresponds
to the nature of the actual labour-process in capitalism in which living labour,
an activity, is transformed into a thing in the process of production: ‘It is noth-
ing but the definite social relation between men themselves which assumes
here, for them, the fantastic form of a relation between things’.27 Marx sums
it up as follows: ‘This fetishism of the world of commodities arises from the
peculiar social character of the labour that produces them’.28
25.â•‡ Marx 1976e, pp. 167–8.

26.â•‡ Marx 1976e, pp. 165–6.
27.â•‡ Marx 1976e, p. 165.
28.â•‡ Ibid.
This fetishism of commodities is so overpowering that even Smith and

Ricardo fell victim to it. Despite their important discovery that labour is the
source of value, they viewed this source, living labour, as a thing or a com-
modity that could be bought and sold. In doing so they fell prey to the fetish-
ism that treats value as a property of things, instead of as the expression of
social relations that take on the form of things. Marx avoids this problem by
distinguishing between labour and labour-power. Living labour is not a thing;
nor is it a commodity. It is an activity. The commodity is labour-power, the
capacity to labour. By distinguishing between labour and labour-power, Marx
also avoids falling victim to the fetishism that ascribes value to the physical
character of things. As Dunayevskaya argues,
[Marx] rejected the concept of labour as a commodity. Labour is an activity,
not a commodity. It was no accident that Ricardo used one and the same word
for the activity and for the commodity. He was a prisoner of his concept
of the human labourer as a thing. Marx, on the other hand, showed that
what the labourer sold was not his labour, but only his capacity to labour,
his labour power.29
The question that still needs to be answered, however, is what enabled Marx
to make this conceptual distinction that went beyond the framework of clas-
sical political economy? If commodity-fetishism is an adequate expression of
existing social relations, how does Marx manage to penetrate through the
mystified veil of commodity-fetishism in such a way as to show the inad-
equacy and transitory nature of existing social relations? After all, as Marx
writes in Chapter One of Capital, ‘The categories of bourgeois economicsâ•›.â•›.â•›.â•›.
are forms of thought which are socially valid, and therefore objective, for
the relations of production belonging to this historically determined mode
of social production, i.e. commodity production’.30 If this is so, how does it
become possible to avoid falling prey to the fetishism of commodities?
Marx himself provides the answer: ‘The whole mystery of commodities,
all the magic and necromancy that surrounds the products of labour on the
basis of commodity production, vanishes therefore as soon as we come to
other forms of production’.31 The only way to overcome the fetishism that attaches
itself to products of labour, he argues, is to step outside of capitalism’s confines and
examine it from the standpoint of non-capitalist social relations. Marx therefore
proceeds to examine value-production from the vantage-point of both pre-
capitalist and postcapitalist social relations. In doing so he returns to, and

30.â•‡ Marx 1976e, p. 169.
31.â•‡ Ibid.
further concretises, his conception in the Grundrisse that ‘the correct grasp of
the present’ hinges on ‘the understanding of the past’ which ‘leads to points
which indicate the transcendence of the present form of production relations,
the movement coming into being, thus foreshadowing the futureâ•›.â•›.â•›.â•›for a new
state of society’.32
After discussing the precapitalist relations of feudal Europe in which ‘the
social relations between individuals in the performance of their labour appear
at all events as their own personal relations, and are not disguised as social
relations between things’,33 he writes: ‘Let us finally imagine, for a change,
an association of free men, working with the means of production held in
common, and expending their many different forms of labour-power in full
self-awareness as one single social labour’.34 In one of the most explicit and
direct discussions of the transcendence of capitalist value-production found
in any of his writings, Marx outlines the following about such a future state
of affairs:
First, he nowhere refers to value or exchange-value in discussing this future
non-capitalist society. All products are ‘directly objects of utility’35 and do not
assume a value-form. Second, what characterises this postcapitalist society is
‘an association of free men’ – not a mere association as such. He notes that pre-
capitalist feudal societies were characterised by ‘directly associated labour’.36
Yet such societies were not free since they were based on ‘patriarchal’ and
oppressive social relations. The new society, in contrast, is one in which social
relations are freely constituted. Third, the individuals in this freely-associated
society directly take part in producing, distributing, and consuming the total
social product. There is no objectified expression of social labour that exists as
a person apart from the individuals themselves.
Marx spells this out as follows: ‘The total product of our imagined associa-
tion is a social product’.37 One part of the aggregate social product serves to
renew or reproduce the means of production. It ‘remains social’ since it is
not individually consumed. The other part of the aggregate social product
32.â•‡ Marx 1986a, p. 389.

33.â•‡ Marx 1976e, p. 170.
34.â•‡ Marx 1976e, p. 171.
35.â•‡ Ibid.
36.â•‡ Ibid. This point is overlooked by Ernest Mandel in his Introduction to the
Ben Fowkes translation of Volume I of Capital, in which he says that Marx aimed to
show ‘why and how capitalism created, through its own development, the economic,
material and social preconditions for society of associated producers’. This overlooks
the radical difference between precapitalist forms of association, based on force and
compulsion, and those delineated by Marx as constituting the operative principle of
a non-capitalist society. See Mandel 1976, p. 17.
37.â•‡ Marx 1976e, p. 171.
‘is consumed by members of the association as means of subsistence’.38 How is

this division of the aggregate product to occur? No mechanism independent
of the free association of the producers decides this for them. It is decided by
the conscious deliberation of the free association itself. Marx does not go into
any details of how this would be arranged, since it ‘will vary with the particu-
lar kind of social organization of production and the corresponding level of
social development attained by the producers’.39
Marx seems reticent about going into too many details about this new soci-
ety. This is because of his emphasis on the freely-associated character of such
a society. The specific manner in which the total social product is divided
between individual consumption and means of production depends on a
number of variables that cannot be anticipated in advance. Marx is wary of
suggesting any mechanism or formula that operates irrespective of what the
freely-associated individuals decide to do based upon their specific level of
social development.
Marx then writes, ‘We shall assume, but only for the sake of a parallel with
the production of commodities, that the share of each individual producer
in the means of subsistence is determined by his labour time’.40 He suggests
that labour-time plays a double role in this new society. First, it functions as
part of ‘a definite social plan [that] maintains the correct proportion between
the different functions of labour and the various needs of the associations’.41
Labour-time is divided up or proportioned in accordance with the need to
replenish the means of production as well as meet the consumption needs of
individuals. He continues, ‘On the other hand, labour time also serves as the
measure of the part taken by each individual in the common labour, and of his
share in the part of the total product destined for social consumption’.42 The
specific share of each individual in social consumption is determined by the
actual amount of labour-time that they perform in the community.
Since this passage has been subject to a wide variety of interpretations, it
is important to pay close attention to Marx’s specific wording. Although he
speaks of a ‘parallel’ with commodity-production insofar as ‘the share of each
individual producer in the means of subsistence is determined by his labour
time’, Marx is not suggesting that the new society is governed by socially-
necessary labour-time. As noted earlier, there is a vast difference between
actual labour-time and socially-necessary labour-time. Under capitalism, actual
38.â•‡ Marx 1976e, p. 172.

39.â•‡ Ibid.
40.â•‡ Ibid.
41.â•‡ Ibid.
42.â•‡ Ibid.
labour-time does not create value; instead, the social average of necessary
labour-time creates value. That he does not envisage the latter operating in
a postcapitalist society is indicated by the sentence that concludes his dis-
cussion: ‘The social relations of the individual producers, both towards their
labour and the products of their labour, are here transparent in their sim-
plicity, in production as well as in distribution’.43 Social relations based on
necessary labour-time are anything but transparent since they are established
behind the backs of the producers by a social average that operates outside
of their control. This is part of what he meant by commodity-fetishism. If
social relations in the new society are ‘transparent in their simplicity’, this can
only mean that the social product is distributed not on the basis of socially-
necessary labour-time but rather on the actual amount of time that the
individual engages in material production. Such a principle is completely
alien to capitalist value-production.
The distinction between actual labour-time and socially-necessary labour-
time is of cardinal importance, since conflating the two leads to the erroneous
conclusion that Marx posits value-production as continuing to operate in a
postcapitalist society. Georg Lukács fell into this problem in his Ontology of
Social Being and The Process of Democratization. In the latter work, for example,
he writes,
For Marx, labour exploitation can exist under socialism if labour time is
expropriated from the labourer, since ‘the share of every producer to the
means of production is determined by his labour time’â•›.â•›.â•›.â•›For Marx, the law
of value is not dependent upon commodity productionâ•›.â•›.â•›.â•›according to Marx
these classical categories are applicable to any mode of production.44
Lukács misreads Marx’s phrase ‘for the sake of a parallel with the produc-
tion of commodities’ as suggesting not just a parallel but an identity between
commodity-production and forms that prevail in a postcapitalist society.
Marx mentions this parallel only to emphasise the role that labour-time
would play in the future. But what does he mean by labour-time? The actual
labour-time that operates after capitalism is far from identical with the socially-
average necessary labour-time that operates in capitalism. In Lukács’s reading
the two become conflated, even though the latter implies value-production
whereas the former implies its transcendence. Marx never mentions value or
exchange-value in discussing the new society in Chapter One, and for good
reason: he holds that the new society’s social relations are ‘transparent in their
43.â•‡ Ibid.
44.â•‡ Lukács 1991, pp. 120–1.
simplicity’. Lukács does not mention Marx’s discussion of the ‘transparent’

nature of social relations in the future, even though Marx repeats it on several
occasions.45 If Lukács had paid greater attention to this issue, he would have
recognised that Marx is not referring to socially-necessary labour-time in dis-
cussing the operative principles of a postcapitalist society.
Why, however, does Marx suggest in Chapter One of Capital that in a new
society ‘the means of subsistence is determined by labour time’ when he
has spent many years attacking Proudhon and the socialist neo-Ricardians
for their proposals to ‘organise’ exchange along the lines of labour-vouchers
and time-chits? Why does he do so when he continues to criticise these uto-
pian experiments in Capital itself?46 Again, the answer lies in the distinction
between actual labour-time and socially-necessary labour-time. The socialist
neo-Ricardians presumed that actual labour-time is the source of value. Like
Ricardo himself, they focused on the quantitative determination of value by
labour-time without ever inquiring into what kind of labour creates value
in the first place. They conflated actual labour-time and socially-necessary
labour-time and therefore imagined that a ‘fair exchange’ of labour-time for
means of subsistence is possible on the basis of value-production. Marx casti-
gated their position as completely utopian because it is impossible, he shows,
to establish social equality on the basis of inequitable social relations in which
the very activity of the labourer is treated as a thing. As Marx reiterates in
Chapter Three of Capital, ‘private labour cannot be treated as its opposite,
directly social labour’47 because social relations based on value-production
are inherently indirect.
The situation becomes very different, however, with the abolition of value-
production. But how exactly is value-production to be eliminated? The ques-
tion centres on the issue of time. With the creation of a free association of
individuals who consciously plan out the production and distribution of
the social product, labour ceases to be subject to the dictatorship of time as
an external, abstract, and impermeable force governing them irrespective
of their will and needs. Once time becomes the space for the individuals’
45.â•‡ See Marx 1976e, p. 173: ‘The religious reflections of the real world can, in any
case, vanish only when the practical relations of everyday life between man and
man, and man and nature, generally present themselves to him in a transparent and
rational form’.
46.â•‡ See especially Chapter Two, where Marx takes issue with ‘the craftiness of
petty-bourgeois socialism, which wants to perpetrate the production of commodities
while simultaneously abolishing the “antagonism between money and commodities”,
i.e. abolishing money itself, since money only exists in and through this antagonism.
One might as well abolish the Pope while leaving Catholicism in existence’. See Marx
1976e, p. 181.
47.â•‡ Marx 1976e, p. 188.
deliberation and development, social relations become ‘transparent’, since

they are no longer governed by an abstract average that operates behind their
backs. ‘Society’ no longer appears as a person apart, but rather as the sum
total of the free and conscious activity of individuals. Labour again becomes
directly social, but on the basis of freedom. Once the dictatorship of abstract
time over the social agents is abolished in the actual process of production,
it becomes possible to distribute the social product on the basis of the actual
amount of time that they contribute to society, since production-relations have
been transformed in such a way as to make such a distribution possible.
Marx addresses this by contrasting the utopian schemes of Proudhon and
the socialist neo-Ricardians to what he considers the more practical approach
of Robert Owen:
Owen presupposes directly socialized labour, a form of production
diametrically opposed to the production of commodities. The certificate of
labour is merely evidence of a part taken by the individual in the common
labour, and of his claim to a certain portion of the common product [that]
has been set aside for consumption. But Owen never made the mistake of
presupposing the production of commodities, while, at the same time, by
juggling with money, trying to circumvent the necessary conditions of that
form of production.48
Marx’s comments on the new society in Chapter One of Capital are brief
and somewhat cryptic. However, they represent an important development
in exhibiting a willingness on his part to directly discuss the nature of a
postcapitalist society.49 What is most striking about Marx’s discussion is the
suggestion that it is impossible to penetrate through the mystified veil of
commodity-fetishism unless the critique of capitalist value-production is
made from the standpoint of its transcendence. The fact that the section
on commodity-fetishism was finalised only after the experience of the 1871
Paris Commune – the first time in history that a mass revolt attempted an
exit from capitalism – suggests the importance of analysing the present from
the vantage-point of the future.50 This may be what Rosa Luxemburg had
48.â•‡ Marx 1976e, pp. 188–9.

49.â•‡ This will take on even more importance following his completion of Capital,
as is indicated by his Civil War in France (1871) and Critique of the Gotha Programme
(1875). This will be discussed in Chapter Four, below.
50.â•‡ See Dunayevskaya 2000, pp. 101–2: ‘The totality of the reorganization of society
by the Communards shed new insight into the perversity of relations under capital-
ismâ•›.â•›.â•›.â•›The richness of human traits, revealed in the Commune, showed in sharp
relief that the fetishism of commodities arises from the commodity form itself. This
deepened the meaning of the form of value as both a logical development and as a
social phenomenon’.
in mind when she wrote, ‘The secret of Marx’s theory of value, his analysis
of money, his theory of capital, his theory of the rate of profit, and conse-
quently of the whole existing economic system is – the transitory nature of
the capitalist economy, its collapse: thus – and this is only another aspect
of the same phenomena – the final goal, socialism. And precisely because,
a priori, Marx looked at capitalism from the socialist’s viewpoint, that is,
from the historical viewpoint, he was enabled to decipher the hieroglyphics
of capitalist economy’.51
As Marx himself puts it at the end of Chapter One, ‘The veil is not removed
from the countenance of the social life-process, i.e. the process of material
production, until it becomes production by freely associated men, and stands
under their conscious and planned control’.52
Although no section of Volume I of Capital takes up the new society as
directly as the concluding pages of Chapter One, Marx’s discussion of a num-
ber of critical theoretical categories in the rest of the volume illuminates his
understanding of the alternative to capitalism. I will focus on four such cat-
egories: (1) the transformation of money into capital; (2) the nature of wage-
labour; (3) the ‘despotic form’ of capital at the point of production; and (4) the
distinction between two kinds of private property in the means of production,
with which Capital ends.
Much of the first volume of Capital is concerned with how money becomes
transformed into capital. The transformation is by no means self-evident. Marx
holds that since ‘the value of a commodity is expressed in its price before it
enters into circulation’ it is ‘therefore a pre-condition of circulation, not its
result’.53 At the same time, money cannot become transformed into capital
without the process of circulation. Although the creation of value precedes
circulation, the transformation of money into capital cannot occur without
a process of circulation. He concludes, ‘Capital cannot therefore arise from
circulation, and it is equally impossible for it to arise apart from circulation. It
must have its origin both in circulation and not in circulation’.54
Marx wrestles with this contradiction – which may appear to be rather
puzzling – throughout the rest of the book. In order to transform money
into capital, the capitalist must find on the market a commodity that pro-
duces a value greater than itself. There is only one commodity that meets
this requirement – labour-power. The transformation of money into capital
requires the purchase and sale of labour-power. To put it differently, money
51.â•‡ Luxemburg 2004, p. 151.

52.â•‡ Marx 1976e, p. 173.
53.â•‡ Marx 1976e, p. 260.
54.â•‡ Marx 1976e, p. 268.
cannot be transformed into capital in the absence of a labour-market. By pur-

chasing labour-power the capitalist can compel the labourers to create a value
greater than the value of their labour-power or means of subsistence. The
increased value is what Marx calls ‘surplus-value’. Money is transformed into
capital through the production of surplus-value.
However, what allows for the existence of a market in labour-power? The
mere act of buying and selling labour-power is not enough. The labourers
have to be compelled to sell their labour-power by being separated from the
objective conditions of production – from the land and control over their
labour. A market in labour-power can arise only if the workers become dis-
possessed of the ownership of possession of anything except their labour-
power, which they sell for a wage in order to survive. Marx contends, ‘In
themselves, money and commodities are no more capital than are the means
of production and subsistence. They need to be transformed into capital. But
this transformation can itself only take place under particular circumstances’.55
The most important of these circumstances is the creation of a class of ‘free’
wage-labourers – ‘Free workers, in the double sense that they neither form
part of the means of production themselves, as would be the case with slaves,
serfs, etc. nor do they own the means of production, as would be the case with
free peasant proprietors’.56
Hence, although a market for labour-time is an essential condition for the
transformation of money into capital, the separation of the worker from the
objective conditions of production is an essential condition for the existence of
a labour-market. In the absence of a generalised labour-market, surplus-value
and capital cannot become the determinative factors of social production and
reproduction. The mere existence of a commodity-market does not therefore
imply capitalist relations of production. Capitalist relations of production
arise on the basis of a generalised labour-market that enables money to be
converted into capital. But the emergence of that labour-market depends in
turn upon a transformation of specific production-relations – most of all the
separation of the labourer from the objective conditions of production.57 Marx
55.â•‡ Marx 1976e, p. 874.

56.â•‡ Ibid.
57.â•‡ There are many forms that this separation can take. It need not take the form
of eliminating the commons by privatising social relations through the formation of
a market-economy, as occurred in Europe during the transition from feudalism to
capitalism. It can also take the form of eliminating the commons by statifying social
relations through the elimination of a competitive market involving small peasant-
proprietors, as occurred in the Soviet Union in the 1920s and 1930s and in China in
the 1950s and 1960s, as well as elsewhere. Just as there are many paths to heaven, so
there are many to purgatory.
therefore argues, ‘The production of commodities leads inexorably to capital-

ist production, once the worker has ceased to be a part of the conditions of
production (as in slavery, serfdom), or once primitive common ownership
has ceased to be the basis of society (India)’.58
The transformation of money into capital therefore occurs in two ‘wholly
distinct, autonomous spheres, two entirely separate processes’.59 One is the
realm of circulation – the buying and selling of labour-power in the market-
place. The other is ‘the consumption of the labour-power that has been acquired,
i.e. the process of production itself’.60 Both are necessary, but the latter makes
the former possible. What makes it possible for a market in labour-power to
arise, and for money to be converted into capital, is the existence of alienated
or abstract labour. It is crucial that,
[T]hese means of production and these means of subsistence confront labour-
power, stripped of all material wealth, as autonomous powers, personified in
their owners. The objective conditions essential to the realization of labour
are alienated from the worker and become manifest as fetishes endowed
with a will and a soul of their own. Commodities, in short, appear as the
purchasers of persons.61
Marx thus indicates that the market is not the primary object of his critique
of capital. Even when discussing the market in labour-power, without which
the transformation of money into capital cannot occur, he emphasises the
formation of specific (alienated) relations of production that make such a
market possible. The implication is that ending the separation of the labour-
ers from the objective conditions of production would render superfluous
the necessity of a labour-market.
This carries over into Marx’s detailed analyses of wage-labour. The exis-
tence of wage-labour is the key to capital-formation. He writes, ‘The capital-
ist form presupposes from the outset the free wage labourer who sells his
labour power to capital’.62 He adds, ‘The whole system of capitalist produc-
tion is based on the worker’s sale of his labour power as a commodity’.63 And
he notes that the means of production and subsistence ‘become capital only
because of the phenomenon of wage labour’.64 However, it takes a lot more
than the existence of money or a commodity-market to generate wage-labour.
58.â•‡ Marx 1976e, p. 951.

59.â•‡ Marx 1976e, p. 1002.
60.â•‡ Ibid.
61.â•‡ Marx 1976e, p. 1003.
62.â•‡ Marx 1976e, p. 452.
63.â•‡ Marx 1976e, p. 557.
64.â•‡ Marx 1976e, p. 1005.
Wage-labour can only arise if workers have become separated from the objec-
tive and subjective conditions of production. They must be torn from the land,
from their instruments of production, and most of all, from control over their
own labouring-activity. Only then do the labourers become compelled to sell
themselves for a wage. Marx writes that this means, ‘In reality, the worker
belongs to capital before he has sold himself to the capitalist’.65
It appears from the purchase and sale of labour-power that the market-
transaction between buyer and seller is the defining feature of capitalist social
relations. But Marx insists that the worker ‘belongs to capital’ even before the
worker is offered up for sale on the market. The sale of labour-power is merely
the consequence of a much more oppressive experience that occurs within the
work-process itself. Marx writes: ‘The starting point of the development that
gave rise to the wage labourer and to the capitalist was the enslavement of the
worker’.66 The critical determinant of both wage-labour and capital, each of
which cannot exist without the other, is this:
The capital-relation presupposes a complete separation between the workers
and the ownership of the conditions for the realization of their labour. As
soon as capitalist production stands on its own feet, it not only maintains this
separation, but reproduces it on a constantly extending scale. The process,
therefore, which creates the capital-relation can be nothing other than the
process which divorces the worker from the ownership of the conditions
of his own labour.67
This has a number of implications in terms of conceptualising an alternative

to capitalism. Marx is suggesting that a postcapitalist society must eliminate
wage-labour. Marx consistently makes this point throughout his published and
unpublished work. As he states in his lectures on ‘Value, Price and Profit’ –
delivered as he was completing Volume I of Capital – ‘the final emancipation
of the working classâ•›.â•›.â•›.â•›[is] the ultimate abolition of the wages system’.68 The
end of wage-labour in turn suggests that a labour-market would not exist in
a new society. However, the abolition of the labour-market does not hinge
upon the abolition of money and the commodity-market, as much as upon the
transformation of the process of production. More specifically, the split between
the worker and the objective conditions of production would have to be healed. It
is surely possible to conceive of a society without money and commodity-
markets, but which still leaves this separation unhealed. And such a society
65.â•‡ Marx 1976e, p. 723. My emphasis.

66.â•‡ Marx 1976e, p. 875.
67.â•‡ Marx 1976e, p. 874.
68.â•‡ Marx 1985b, p. 149.
would be one in which wage-labour continues to prevail, but such a society

is far removed from Marx’s concept of socialism.
What has often stood in the way of this realisation is the assumption that
Marx counterposed the ‘anarchy of the market’ to the social ‘organisation’
found in the capitalist process of production. A long line of thinkers in the
radical tradition have argued in favour of correcting the inefficiencies and
‘anarchy’ of markets by extending the presumably more ‘rational’ and ordered
mechanisms of the production-process into the sphere of distribution. Marx’s
discussion of the despotic form of capitalist production tends to undermine claims
that he favoured this approach. He writes, ‘If capitalist direction is thus two-
fold in content, owing to the twofold nature of the process of production
which has to be directed – on the one hand a social labour process for the cre-
ation of a product, and on the other hand capital’s process of valorization – in
form it is purely despotic’.69
This despotism is contained in the fact that ‘it is not the worker who
employs the conditions of his work, but rather the reverse, the conditions of
work employ the worker’.70 It is true that Marx refers to ‘the anarchic sys-
tem of competition’ that he calls ‘the most outrageous squandering of social
means of production’.71 However, he notes, ‘the immanent laws of capitalist
production manifest themselves in the external movement’72 of individual units
of competing capitals. He contends that the ‘scientific analysis of competi-
tion is possible only if we can grasp the inner nature of capital’. ‘Anarchic’
competition is not the cause but the consequence of despotic relations of
production.
According to Marx, what makes such relations of production despotic is
the subordination of living labour by ‘dead labour’. He argues in ‘The Results
of the Immediate Process of Production’, ‘In fact, the rule of the capitalist over
the worker is nothing but the rule of the independent conditions of labour over
the worker, conditions that have made themselves independent of him’.73
Viewed from this perspective, neither the ‘anarchy of the market’ nor even
the actions of the capitalists vis-à-vis the workers serve as the essential objects
of the Marxian critique of capital. The capitalist, also, is merely the expression
of the separation of the worker from the objective conditions of production.
For once these conditions become independent from the worker, the necessity
arises for a discrete class of capitalists to chain the workers to an alienated
69.â•‡ Marx 1976e, p. 450.

70.â•‡ Marx 1976e, p. 548.
71.â•‡ Marx 1976e, p. 667.
72.â•‡ Marx 1976e, p. 433. My emphasis.
73.â•‡ Marx 1976e, p. 989.
labour-process.74 This suggests that even the elimination of the personifications

of capital does not suffice to free the worker, so long as the breach between
the worker and the objective conditions of production remains unhealed. On
these grounds, Marx often criticises his fellow socialists for advocating capital
without the capitalists. He argues,
The functions fulfilled by the capitalist are no more than the functions
of capital – viz. the valorization of value by absorbing living labour –
executed consciously and willingly. The capitalist functions only as personified
capital, capital as a person, just as the worker is no more than labour
personifiedâ•›.â•›.â•›.â•›Hence the rule of the capitalist over the worker is the rule
of things over man, of dead labour over the living, of the product over the
producer.75
The fullest indication that Marx neither posits the market as the major object
of his critique, nor conceives of its abolition as the key to creating an alterna-
tive to capitalism, is contained in a paragraph added to ‘The General Law of
Capitalist Accumulation’ in the French edition of Capital, in 1872–5. In dis-
cussing the concentration and centralisation of capital to its ultimate limit, he
writes: ‘In any branch of industry centralization would reach its extreme limit
if all the individual capitals invested there were fused into a single capital.
In a given society this limit would be reached only when the entire social
capital was united in the hands of either a single capitalist or a single capitalist
corporation’.76 This indicates that, for Marx, capitalism’s law of motion would
not be radically altered even if ‘the entire social capital’ became united ‘in the
hands of either a single capitalist or a single capitalist corporation’. Such a
situation would, of course, imply the effective abolition of a competitive free
market. But it need not imply the end of capitalism itself. Capitalism could
survive, Marx is suggesting, with a variety of forms of circulation and distri-
bution. It is at least theoretically possible that capitalist social relations could
persist even in the absence of an anarchic or competitive ‘free’ market.77
74.â•‡ The process becomes reciprocal, of course, in turn.

75.â•‡ Marx 1976e, pp. 989–90.
76.â•‡ Marx 1976e, p. 779. For a discussion of how this passage proved of critical
importance in developing the theory that ‘Soviet-type’ societies were state-capitalist,
see Dunayevskaya 1992 and 2002.
77.â•‡ This is not to suggest that such an extreme form of concentration and centralisa-
tion of capital would necessarily be more productive or efficient. Volume III of Capital
suggests that a radical suppression of competition between individual units of capital
would be likely to deprive capitalism of its vivacity. Marx writes, ‘And if capital
formation were to fall exclusively into the hands of a few existing big capitals, for
whom the mass of profit outweighs the rate, the animating fire of production would
be totally extinguished. It would die out. It is the rate of profit that is the driving force
This does not mean, however, that capitalism could exist if all of global
capital were concentrated in the hands of a single state or single capitalist
corporation. The passage at the end of Volume I of Capital on concentration
and centralisation reaching its ‘extreme limit’ refers to a given national unit of
capital. It is impossible, however, given the nature of value-production, for all
of global capital to be concentrated into a single hand. Marx earlier directly
spoke to this in the Grundrisse:
Since value constitutes the basis of capital, and capital thus necessarily
exists only through exchange for a counter-value, it necessarily repels itself
from itself. A universal capital, not confronted by alien capitals with which
it exchanges – which from our present standpoint nothing confronts it but
wage labour or itself – is consequently an impossibility. The mutual repulsion
of capitals is already inherent in capital as realised exchange value.78
Taken together with the statement at the end of Volume I of Capital on the
concentration and centralisation of capital, the implication is clear enough:
the control of capital by a single state or entity is incompatible with Marx’s
conception of ‘socialism’ or ‘communism’, while any effort to achieve this on
a global level is completely quixotic. Socialism or communism, as Marx earlier
stated in The German Ideology, can only arise as part of a world-system, a global
transformation. But such a transformation does not consist of concentrating
and centralising capital in a single entity.
Marx carries out a further discussion of the possibility of a unit of national
capital existing without ‘free market’ competition, in his discussion of two
kinds of ‘private property’ at the end of the first volume of Capital. In dis-
cussing the ‘So-Called Primitive Accumulation of Capital’, he points to the
destruction of two kinds of private property in the means of production. One is
‘the dissolution of the private property based on the labour of its owner’. This
refers to ‘The private property of the worker in his means of production’.79
This property is based on small-scale land-holding and industry. This kind
of private property is ruthlessly and violently destroyed by the process that
brings modern capitalist private property into being. Modern capitalism arises
most of all from the eviction of the peasant-proprietors from the land, from
the destruction of their private property.
in capitalist production, and hence nothing is produced save what can be produced
at a profit’. See Marx 1981a, p. 368.
78.â•‡ Grundrisse, Marx 1986a, p. 350. This passage tends to undercut theories of ‘ultra-
imperialism’ which were later formulated by such thinkers as Karl Kautsky, and which
have become au courant in some of the contemporary literature on globalisation.
79.â•‡ Marx 1976e, p. 927.
Although Marx sharply criticises the way in which capitalist private

property supplants the private property of the direct producer, he does not
advocate returning to the landowning-patterns that characterised precapi-
talist societies in the West.80 Such small, isolated, and relatively fragmented
landowning patterns do not befit the higher form of social organisation that
will follow capitalism. But they do indicate that forms of private ownership
and possession have existed that are qualitatively different from capitalist
private property, which is based on the complete separation of the labouring
populace from the objective conditions of production.
Marx refers explicitly to the Hegelian concept of ‘the negation of the nega-
tion’ to characterise this process. The first negation is large-scale capitalist
private property that supplants the small-scale property of artisans and peas-
ants. But as capitalism undergoes a further concentration and centralisation
in fewer and fewer hands, the point is reached where this negation is itself
negated: ‘But capitalist production begets, with the inexorability of it a natu-
ral process, its own negation’.81 This second negation does not reestablish the
fragmented and isolated parcels of precapitalist property, but it does end the
breach between the labourers and the objective conditions of production.
What emerges is ‘cooperation and the possession in common of the land and
the means of production produced by labour itself’.82 The new society, for
Marx, represents a reversal of the basic principle of capitalism, which was
‘the annihilation of that private property which rests on the labour of the
individual himself’.83 Instead, a free association of producers overcomes the
separation between individuals and the conditions of material wealth. This
entails something far more emancipatory than the transformation of private
property into state-property; indeed, Marx never mentions the state once in
this chapter that concludes Volume I of Capital. His analysis of the two kinds
of private property at the end of the first volume of Capital shows once again
that he is not limiting his horizon to the contrast of private versus collective
property. Instead, he is focusing on the contrast between property-relations
that fragment individuals from their natural and subjective capacities and
ones that overcome this separation. The latter, for Marx, constitutes the sub-
stance of a new society.
80.â•‡ The situation is quite different in the non-Western world, where communal
property predominated. Especially in his later writings, Marx tends to see these
communal property forms as a possible material condition for enabling developing
societies to shorten or even bypass the stage of capitalist industrialisation, if they
could link up with socialist transformation in the industrialised West.
81.â•‡ Marx 1976e, p. 929.
82.â•‡ Ibid.
83.â•‡ Marx 1976e, p. 940.
Volumes II and III of Capital

Volumes II and III of Capital are integral to Marx’s overall theoretical project.
In one outline he gave of his critical of political economy, Marx planned for
Volume I to deal with the process of production, Volume II with the process
of circulation, and Volume III with the process of capitalist production as
a whole.84 He only lived to complete the first volume, even though most of
the manuscripts of what became Volumes II and III were written prior to the
publication of the first volume in 1867. Volumes II and III have to be read with
a degree of caution, since they were edited and published after Marx’s death
by Engels (Volume II appeared in 1885; Volume III appeared nearly a decade
later). It is therefore unlikely that either volume would have appeared in its
present form and content had Marx succeeded in completing it.85 Volume II
clearly lacks the polish as well as literary quality of the first volume, and its
more rarefied subject-matter makes it perhaps one of the least amenable to
immediate application on behalf of political or social causes amongst all of
his writings. Volume III has given rise to far more discussion and debate in
the critical literature on Marx, largely because it deals with topics that touch
directly on matters of concern to traditional economists, such as credit, inter-
est, rent, the rate of profit, speculative capital and the causes of crises. Given
the great span of topics covered in these two volumes (most of which are
not touched upon in Volume I at all), I must limit myself to those passages
that directly speak to the subject-matter of the present work.
Although Volume II of Capital deals with circulation, it would be a mistake
to assume that it deals with the circulation of commodities, since that is analy-
sed in the first part of Volume I. Rather, the second volume deals with the cir-
culation of capital. The circulation of capital comprises three component parts
– money-capital, productive capital, and commodity-capital. These are not
three independent classes of capital, but rather three forms of industrial capi-
tal, separate moments of the same aspect of the economy. Capital of necessity
takes on these three modes of existence: they are ‘different forms with which
capital clothes itself in its different stages’.86 Their inter-relation is Marx’s pri-
mary object of investigation in the second volume.
84.â•‡ As noted earlier, he also intended that what became published after his death
as Theories of Surplus Value should serve as Capital’s concluding volume.
85.â•‡ MEGA2 has published Marx’s original manuscripts for Volumes II and III, which
for the first time has allowed scholars to critically evaluate Engels’s role in editing
the manuscripts for publication. This debate falls outside the scope of this study and
is not discussed here.
86.â•‡ Marx 1978, p. 109.
Marx’s aim is to describe how these circuits operate in a chemically-pure

capitalist economy. He writes, ‘In order to grasp these forms in their pure
state, we must first of all abstract from all aspects that have nothing to do
with the change and constitution of the forms as such’.87 He abstracts from
contingent or secondary factors that get in the way of grasping the object of
his analysis by assuming: (1) commodities are sold at their value; (2) no revo-
lutions in value occur in the circulation-process;88 (3) there is no foreign trade:
‘We therefore completely abstract from it here, and treat gold as a direct ele-
ment of the annual [domestic] production’;89 and (4) there are no crises of
realisation. Marx is not leaving aside these factors in order to create a purely
abstract model of capitalist accumulation that has little or no bearing on real-
ity: instead, he is stripping away secondary or tertiary phenomena that get
in the way of delineating capitalism’s actual law of motion. According to
Marx, capital can ‘only be grasped as a movement, not as a static thing’.90 He
employs this method of abstraction in order to present the circuits of capital
in the clearest possible terms.
Given its relatively rarified subject matter, it is surprising that Volume II
contains any discussion of a postcapitalist society at all. However, a close
analysis shows that several passages address the issue. What grounds much
of Marx’s discussion of the issue is a concept that is discussed in the opening
pages of Volume II – the ‘distribution of the elements of production’. This
does not refer to the distribution of relations of circulation as opposed to those
of production. Instead, it refers to how one class – the workers – are torn
from the objective conditions of production and become ‘distributed’ as ‘free’
wage-labourers, while another class – the capitalists – effectively own them.
As Marx puts it:
Thus the situation that underlines the act of M-C (L/MP) is one of
distribution; not distribution in the customary sense of distribution of
the means of consumption, but rather the distribution of the elements
of production themselves, with the objective factors concentrated on one
side, and labour-power isolated from them on the other. The means of
production, the objective productive capital, must thus already face the
worker as such, as capital, before the act M-L can become general throughout
society.91
87.â•‡ Ibid.
88.â•‡ Marx does so because such revolutions do not alter the proportions of the ele-
ments of value in terms of its various components so long as they are universally
distributed.
89.â•‡ Marx 1978, p. 546.
90.â•‡ Marx 1978, p. 185.
91.â•‡ Marx 1978, p. 116.
The importance of this concept becomes clearer later in the third part of
Volume II, ‘The Reproduction and Circulation of the Total Social Capital’.
This part has a largely polemical thrust, in that Marx aims to show what
he considers the erroneous nature of two prevailing tendencies in political
economy. One is that of Adam Smith, who ‘spirited away’ constant capital
by arguing that it is ultimately consumed as revenue. The other is under-
consumptionism, as represented by such figures as Sismondi, Malthus, and
Rodbertus (and more recently, one could argue, by Paul Sweezy, Ernest
Mandel and David Harvey), which argues that the critical determinant in
capital-accumulation is a level of effective demand sufficient to buy up the
surplus-product.
Marx counters Smith’s view by arguing that the value of constant capital
does not dissolve into wages and profits, since a considerable portion of it is
consumed productively. There are two reasons for Marx’s criticism of Adam
Smith on this issue. The first, and most obvious, is that if Smith were right that
the value of constant capital ultimately dissolves into revenue, there would be
no reason for workers to fight against the appropriation of their unpaid hours
of labour by the capitalists. Although that is doubtless an important consid-
eration, there is also a deeper issue involved in Marx’s critique of Smith than
the alienation of the product from the producer. For Marx, I would argue, the
most egregious aspect of Smith’s error is that it conceals how constant capital
is the instrument through which the capitalist gains mastery over the worker.
If the value of constant capital dissolves into revenue, the domination of dead
over living labour dissolves as well. Thus, Smith completely obscures what
Marx considers to be the crux and the distinctiveness of the class-relation of
capitalist society.
Some of the same considerations explain Marx’s objection to under-
consumptionism – the notion that the central contradiction of capitalism is the
inability of workers to buy back the surplus-product. Of course, Marx knows
full well that the purchasing power of the workers does not enable them to
buy back the surplus-product. But the reason for this, he contends, is not the
lack of effective demand: instead, the lack of effective demand is a result of a
deeper problem. Although crises often manifest themselves in an inability to
sell the surplus-product, they ‘first become evident not in the direct reduction
of consumer demand, the demand for individual consumption, but rather a
decline in the number of exchanges of capital for capital, in the reproduction
process of capital’.92 Marx counters the under-consumptionist argument as
follows:
92.â•‡ Marx 1978, pp. 156–7.

It is a pure tautology to say that crises are caused by the scarcity of solvent
consumers, or of a paying consumption. The capitalist system does not know
any other modes of consumption than a paying oneâ•›.â•›.â•›.â•›But if one were to
attempt to clothe this tautology with a semblance of profounder justification
by saying that the working class receives too small a portion of their own
product, and the evil would be remedied by giving them a larger share of
it, or raising their wages, we should reply that crises are always preceded
by a period in which wages rise generally and the working class actually
gets a larger share of the annual product intended for consumption.93
Marx objected to under-consumptionism because it tends to locate the central

contradiction of capitalism in the market instead of in production. To Marx,
this not only gets the facts of capitalism wrong; it also misconstrues how to
correct them. If capitalism’s main problem is the lack of effective demand, it
follows that resolving it centres on paying workers better wages and benefits.
The need to uproot the domination of dead over living labour becomes just
as readily obscured as by Smith’s error.
Marx’s view, which is spelled out in the formulas of expanded reproduc-
tion, did not at all satisfy critics such as Rosa Luxemburg. As she saw it,
Marx’s assuming-away of realisation crises projects a tendency of unimpeded
equilibrium or balanced growth. As she wrote in Accumulation of Capital, ‘The
complicated problem of accumulation is thus converted into a diagrammatic
progression of surprising simplicity. We may continue the above chain of
equations ad infinitum so long asâ•›.â•›.â•›.â•›a certain increase in the constant capital in
Department I94 always necessitates a certain increase in the variable capital’.95
She found the implications of this profoundly disturbing, for some of the same
reasons that a number of economists have found it appealing – that it seems to
suggest the possibility of infinite capitalist expansion.96
93.â•‡ Marx 1978, pp. 486–7.

94.â•‡ Marx distinguishes between two departments of social production. Department
I is means of production, consisting of: a) the value of means of production consumed
in creating means of production (which Marx calls ‘productive consumption’); b) the
value of means of production laid out in labour-power (or the sum of wages paid
out in the sphere of production); and c) the profits of the industrial capitalist. Depart-
ment II is means of consumption, consisting of: a) the value of means of production
transferred to commodities that are individually consumed by workers and capital-
ists; b) the value of the labour-power that produces such consumption-goods; and
c) the profits of the capitalists accrued from it. Surplus-value is embodied in both
departments.
95.â•‡ Luxemburg 1968, p. 118.
96.â•‡ For more on this, see Desai 2002.
Luxemburg’s sharp criticism of Marx’s presentation of the formulae of

expanded reproduction did not stop her, however, from suggesting that it
offered a possible model of a postcapitalist society that overcomes the ‘anar-
chic’ character of capitalism. She wrote in The Accumulation of Capital: ‘Marx’s
diagrams of enlarged reproduction has objective validity – mutatis mutandis –
for a planned society’.97 While she held that Marx’s formulas failed to present
the actual dynamic of capitalism by ignoring effective demand and realisation-
crises, they are valid, she wrote, for a ‘planned’ economy in which ‘market-
anarchy’ is overcome.
Three years earlier, and writing from the very different perspective of dis-
proportionality-theory, Rudolf Hilferding had argued that Marx’s formulae
suggest the kind of normative balance between production and consumption
that could be achieved through state-intervention in the economy. Whereas
Luxemburg criticised Marx’s formulae on the grounds that they suggest bal-
anced growth, Hilferding embraced them for – so he presumed – offering a
model of balanced growth. As one recent study puts it, ‘By assuming bal-
ance in the reproduction schema, co-ordination is established between capital
and consumer-good producing sectors. For some Marxists, writing at the start
of the twentieth century, this provided a seductive insight into how govern-
ments might impose order on the economic system’.98
A more recent articulation of Hilferding’s view was expressed by Ernest
Mandel, author of the introduction to the most recent English translation of
Capital. He writes, ‘It follows logically from this idea that if the capitalists
were capable of investing “rationally,” i.e., so as to maintain proportions
of equilibrium between the two main sectors of production, crises could be
avoided’.99 Mandel denies that capitalists can or will rationally plan; he instead
calls for rational planning based on the elimination of private property and
private capitalists by bringing capital-accumulation under the management
of a state-plan. His position owes much to the efforts of such thinkers as
Wassiley Leontief, who earlier sought to apply Marx’s theory of expanded
reproduction to the state-centralised economies of the USSR.
The problem with these approaches – whether of Luxemburg, Hilferding,
and Mandel/Leontief – is that the formulae of expanded reproduction, as is true
of Marx’s analysis of capitalist production as a whole, are not applicable to
97.â•‡ Luxemburg 1968, p. 131.

98.â•‡ Trigg (ed.) 2006, p. 64. In Finance Capital, Hilferding argued that ‘order’ could
only be established by ‘subordinating the whole of production to conscious control’.
It is instructive that this fetishism of the plan, which later became so pronounced in
Stalinist Russia and China, had its origins in the Second International.
99.â•‡ Mandel 1962, p. 366.
any society other than capitalism. This is because, as I have been arguing, the
value-production upon which they are based is applicable only to capitalism.
Moreover, there is little or no textual evidence to suggest that Marx’s aim
in presenting the schemata of expanded reproduction was to imply anything
about a postcapitalist society, one way or the other. Although he emphasises
the material form of constant capital, he deals with constant capital – as all of
the factors of production and circulation – in value-terms. And for Marx value-
production is the differentia specifica of capitalism.100
Nonetheless, while Marx does not address the nature of a postcapitalist
society in his formulae of expanded reproduction, he touches on it in a num-
ber of other places in Volume II of Capital. For example, in the middle of an
analysis of the exchange between the two departments of social capital in the
chapter on ‘Simple Reproduction’, Marx suddenly breaks into a discussion
of a new society: ‘If production were social instead of capitalist, it is evident
that these products of department I would be no less constantly redistributed
among the branches of production in this department as means of production,
according to the needs of reproduction; one part directly remaining in the
sphere of production from which it entered as a product, another part being
shifted to other points of production’.101 Here, Marx is suggesting that the form
of the distribution of the elements of production is of decisive significance for
any social order. In capitalism, this distribution occurs behind the backs of the
producers, according to the dictates of value-production. In socialism, the dis-
tribution would be based on the needs of the human agents of reproduction
itself. This distribution is of a radically different kind under socialism, since
the producers allocate a given amount of material wealth to replenish means
of production and another amount to supply their consumption-needs. At this
point, value-production does not enter the picture at all.102
To take another example, in Chapter Sixteen on ‘The Turnover of Variable
Capital’, Marx goes into much greater detail by discussing what prevails ‘If
we were to consider a communist society in place of a capitalist one’: ‘Money
capital would immediately be done away with, and so too the disguises that
100.â•‡ Although Marx’s formulae are specifically directed to the analysis of capital-
ism, this does not mean that some kind of simple or expanded reproduction would
not exist in a postcapitalist society. Such a process would not, however, represent a
process of accumulation of capital. Marx’s formulae of expanded reproduction, which
illustrate the dynamic of capital-accumulation, cannot therefore be directly grafted
onto efforts to envisage a postcapitalist society.
101.â•‡ Marx 1978, pp. 500–1.
102.â•‡ It is important to note that Marx is here discussing the distribution of the ele-
ments of production, not distribution in the sense of the sphere of circulation, which
is of secondary and derivative importance.
transactions acquire through it. The matter would be simply reduced to the
fact that the society must reckon in advance how much labour, means of pro-
duction and means of subsistence it can spend, without dislocation’.103 Since
value-production ceases in a postcapitalist society, there is no reason for its
transactions to occur through the medium of monetary capital; society itself,
through the free association of producers, would ‘reckon in advance’ how the
elements of social wealth are to be produced and distributed.
Marx elaborates upon this in even more detail in Chapter Eighteen:
With collective production, money capital is completely dispensed with.
The society distributes labour power and means of production between
the various branches of industry. There is no reason why the producers
should not receive paper tokens permitting them to withdraw an amount
corresponding to their labour time from the social consumption fund. But
these tokens are not money; they do not circulate.104
This passage builds upon and extends his discussion of the new society at
the end of the first chapter of Volume I of Capital, since Marx explicitly refers
to receiving tokens or vouchers based on the amount of labour-time contrib-
uted by the individual to the community. It is just as necessary for a social-
ist society to distribute the elements of production as any other. In contrast
to capitalist society, however, this distribution does not occur through an
autonomous force that is independent of the producers. The distribution of
the elements of production is not computed on the basis of an abstract social
average of labour-time, but on the actual amount of labour-time contributed
by the individual. Labour-time under socialism, as Marx has earlier indi-
cated in Volume I of Capital, simply refers to the amount of physical hours
employed in a given enterprise. One receives, in the form of tokens, a share
of the common goods of society that is materially equivalent to the actual
amount of time engaged in producing them for the community.
Interestingly, none of Marx’s discussions of a postcapitalist society in Vol-
ume II of Capital mention the state. He instead refers to the control of the ele-
ments of production and distribution by society. Nor, as we have seen, does
he mention the state in his discussion of a postcapitalist society in the first
chapter of Volume I of Capital.
While Marx’s comments in Volume II on postcapitalism are hardly system-
atic or detailed, they are conceptually consistent with his comments on the
subject in Volume I of Capital. From his earliest writings of the 1840s to his late
103.â•‡ Marx 1978, p. 390.

104.â•‡ Marx 1978, p. 434.
ones, Marx insisted that the aim of capitalist society is not to enrich human
needs and capabilities, but rather to augment value. Capitalism is an abstract
form of domination that has one over-riding goal: to accumulate value for
its own sake. A new society would need to radically reverse this. On these
grounds, Marx writes in Chapter Four of Volume II, ‘For capitalism is already
essentially abolished once we assume that it is enjoyment that is the driving
principle and not enrichment itself’.105
Volume III of Capital may seem to be even less likely than the second volume
to venture into a discussion of a new society, since it is largely devoted to a
detailed analysis of such economic phenomena as profit-rates, credit, interest,
rent, and speculative capital and crises. Yet, even in the course of discussing
these issues, Marx makes some important comments about what is to follow
a capitalist society.
This can be seen especially in Marx’s analysis of credit. He shows that credit
works to accelerate and amplify the concentration and centralisation of capi-
tal, as it enables larger units of capital to buy up and absorb their competitors.
This leads to the formation of joint-stock companies (publicly-held corpora-
tions based on stock-ownership) and mega-firms. Publicly-held corporations
allow for an enormous development of economies of scale and output that
small, individual units of capital find impossible to match. Private capital
is increasingly forced out by what Marx calls ‘social capital’, that is, a col-
lectivity of capitalists, in short, the investor-class. He writes, ‘Capitalâ•›.â•›.â•›.â•›now
receives the form of social capital (capital of directly associated producers) in
contrast to private capital, and its enterprises appear as social enterprises as
opposed to private ones. This is the abolition of capital as private property
within the confines of the capitalist mode of production itself’.106 Here, among
other things, Marx is indicating that the capitalist mode of production does
not necessarily depend upon capital taking the form of private property. In
the joint-stock company, the individual entrepreneur loses private ownership
of the enterprise. As the firm becomes larger and more complex, capitalist pri-
vate property becomes socialised. Of course, here it is not socialised either by,
or in the interest of, the workers. But this process still represents ‘the abolition
of capital as private property’. He adds,
In joint-stock companies, the function is separated from capital ownership, so
labour is completely separated from ownership of the means of production
and of surplus labour. This result of capitalist production in its highest
development is a necessary point of transition towards the transformation
105.â•‡ Marx 1976e, p. 199.

106.â•‡ Marx 1981a, p. 567.
of capital back into the property of the producers, though no longer as the
private property of individual producers but rather as their property as
associated producers, as directly social property. It is furthermore a point
of transition towards the transformation of all functions formerly bound up
with capital ownership in the reproduction process into simple functions
of the associated producers, into social functions.107
Joint-stock companies further extend the alienation and dispossession of the

labourer. The workers – as well as the capitalists – cease to have even an indi-
rect ownership-stake in the enterprise. The firm becomes completely autono-
mous from the social forces that comprise it. The joint-stock company can
therefore in no way be considered an expression of ‘socialism’. At the same
time, the joint-stock company represents a possible transitional form towards
a new social order, in that it undermines the principle of private ownership
of the means of production. In doing so, it helps prepare the ground for a
form of socialisation that can overcome the separation of the labourers from
the conditions of production.
Marx is not suggesting that the formation of the credit-system and joint-
stock companies on their own impel the formation of a socialist society. He
directly criticises those ‘socialists’ who have ‘illusions’ about the ability of
mega-firms to directly lead to a new society:
Finally, there can be no doubt that the credit system will serve as a powerful
lever in the course of transition from the capitalist mode of production to
the mode of production of associated labour; however, only as one element
in connection with other large-scale organic revolutions in the mode of
production itself. On the other hand, illusions about the miraculous power
of the credit and banking system, in the socialist sense, arise from complete
ignorance about the capitalist mode of production and about the credit
system, as one of its forms.108
Marx’s above description of the joint-stock company as a possible transitional

form (among others) to a new society, even though it is firmly within the
confines of the capitalist mode of production, makes clear that he does not
conceive of it as part of a distinct phase between capitalism and socialism.
107.â•‡ Marx 1981a, p. 568.

108.â•‡ Marx 1981a, p. 743. Marx’s criticism of the illusions about the joint-stock
company ‘in the socialist sense’ anticipates what became the standard orthodoxy in
much of the Second International after his death. Its leading theoreticians (such as
Kautsky and Hilferding) argued that such formations would naturally ‘grow over’
into socialism on their own. The consequences of such gradualism set the stage for
the Second International’s demise in 1914.
The joint-stock company is firmly embedded within the capitalist mode of

production – indeed, it can be considered its ‘highest’ expression.
And yet this highest expression of capitalism represents a possible transi-
tional form to a future society. This suggests that, for Marx, the transitional for-
mation that leads to socialism is nothing other than capitalism. He contends,
This is the abolition of the capitalist mode of production within the capitalist
mode of production itself, and hence a self-abolishing contradiction, which
presents itself prima facie as a mere point of transition to a new form of
production. It presents itself as such a contradiction even in appearance.
It gives rise to monopoly in certain spheres and hence provokes state
intervention. It reproduces a new financial aristocracy, a new kind of
parasite in the guise of company promoters, speculators, and merely nominal
directors; an entire system of swindling and cheating with respect to the
promotion of companies, issues of shares and share dealings. It is private
production unchecked by private ownership.109
Marx’s discussion of the ‘swindling’ and ‘cheating’ that characterise the

mega-firm indicates that he is by no means embracing it as a liberatory form.
Nor does he view in a positive light the tendency of these mega-firms to
‘provoke state-intervention’ in the economy, since he says that that produces
a parasitic financial aristocracy.
Still less does he contend that the joint-stock company represents a form of
socialised production. He explicitly refers to it as ‘private production unchecked
by private ownership’. Precisely because no single individual or unit of capi-
tal has complete ownership of the mega-firm, the latter extends rather than
mitigates the central problem of capitalism – the separation of the producers
from the conditions of production.
As Marx shows at the end of Volume I of Capital, the distinguishing mark of
capitalist private property is not that private individuals own property. Non-
capitalist producers also own property, but it is often destroyed by capital-
ist private property. The distinguishing mark of capitalist private property
is that it rests upon the dispossession of the labourer. This is why Marx holds
that private ownership can be eliminated without eliminating private produc-
tion. He makes this explicit by writing that the joint-stock system ‘is an aboli-
tion of capitalist private industry on the basis of the capitalist system itself’.110
Nevertheless, the separation of the enterprise from the control of private capi-
talists creates a material condition on the basis of which the workers could
109.â•‡ Marx 1981a, p. 569.

110.â•‡ Marx 1981a, p. 570.
eventually create genuinely socialised relations – once, that is, they manage to
strip the cooperative content of labour from its despotic form by achieving an
‘organic revolution in the mode of production’.
This leads Marx into a direct discussion of what can produce such a transi-
tion from the old society to the new one – worker-owned and managed coop-
eratives. On the one hand, Marx was very interested in workers’ cooperatives
and did not downplay their importance, including when undertaken by such
utopian socialists as Fourier and Owen. On the other hand, he was very criti-
cal of socialists who disparaged such efforts, like Saint-Simon.111 Marx writes
of workers’ cooperatives,
The cooperative factories run by workers themselves are, within the old
form, the first examples of the emergence of a new form, even though
they naturally reproduce in all cases, in their present organization, all the
defects of the existing system, and must reproduce them. But the opposition
between capital and labour is abolished here, even if at first only in the form
that the workers in association become their own capitalist, i.e., they use
the means of production to valorize their own labour. These factories show
how, at a certain stage of development of the material forces of production,
and of the social forms of production corresponding to them, a new mode
of production develops and is formed naturally out of the old. Without the
factory system that arises from the capitalist mode of production, cooperative
factories could not develop.112
There is much to be said of this passage. First, Marx avers explicitly that
workers’ cooperatives represent a new form of production. He does not say
that of the joint-stock company, which he sees as the highest expression of
capitalist production. The fact that the latter does away with private own-
ership does not change that one iota. This is an important consideration,
since it was already misunderstood by many socialists of the time (as well
as afterwards) who held that the credit-system would enable capitalism to
naturally evolve directly into socialism.113
111.â•‡ See Marx 1981a, p. 740: ‘All his earlier writings are in fact simply a glorifica-
tion of modern bourgeois society against feudal society, or of the industrialists and
bankers against the marshals and law-mongers of the Napoleonic era. How different
from the contemporary writings of Owen!’
112.â•‡ Marx 1981a, p. 571.
113.â•‡ This was one of the central issues in the dispute between Rosa Luxemburg
and Eduard Bernstein, who held such an evolutionary position based upon stressing
the growing importance of large-scale credit and centralisation of capital. This debate
consumed the German Social-Democratic movement in 1898–9 and afterwards. See
Luxemburg 2004.
Second, Marx holds that workers’ cooperatives represent a new form of

production insofar as they overcome the opposition between capital and
labour, at least initially and provisionally. This is because ‘In the case of the
cooperative factory, the antithetical character of the supervisory work disap-
pears, since the manager is paid by the workers instead of representing capi-
tal in opposition to them’.114
Third, despite the importance of these cooperatives in foreshadowing the
future, they are limited by the fact that the ‘workers in association become
their own capitalist’ insofar as the collectively-owned and managed enterprise
remains subject to value-production. They still ‘valorise their own labour’.
Marx does not go on to explain exactly how they valorise their own labour,
but he appears to be suggesting that since these cooperatives exist as islands
in a capitalist ocean they cannot avoid operating in accordance with the law
of value. In this sense, they still remain within capitalism, even as they contain
social relations that point to its possible transcendence.115
It may seem that workers who take over a productive enterprise and run it
as their own cooperative have freed themselves from the capital-relation, and,
in one sense, they have. They have certainly eliminated the need for the capi-
talist. As Marx puts it, ‘the capitalist vanishes from the production process
as someone superfluous’.116 At the same time, Marx repeatedly criticises the
socialists of his time for ‘wanting capital without the capitalist’.117 While the
workers who take over the productive enterprise may free themselves from
the need to subject themselves to a capitalist, that does not necessarily mean
that they have freed themselves from the social power of capital. Workers’
cooperatives that exist in a context in which exchange-value continues to gov-
ern the production and circulation of commodities eventually discover that
they have less freedom and control than may at first appear. For while there is
no longer a particular capitalist within the enterprise to tell them what to do,
the system of value-production informs or governs their decisions as to what
to produce, how much to produce, how fast to produce, and in what form to
produce. The more social cooperatives continue to operate as islands within a
sea of value-production, the less real social power the workers actually have
as they find themselves subject to an autonomous force of value-production.
114.â•‡ Marx 1981a, p. 512.

115.â•‡ Needless to say, this would characterise not only a particular cooperative that
is surrounded by a sea of capitalism, but also even large-scale networks of cooperatives
that failed to be supplemented by a systemic transformation of capitalist production
on an international as well as national level. Whether such cooperatives can inspire
such a transformation remains an important, and open, question.
116.â•‡ Marx 1981a, p. 511.
117.â•‡ Marx 1986a, p. 229.
This does not prevent, however, worker-owned cooperatives from consti-

tuting a transitional form to socialism – any more than the fact that the joint-
stock company is firmly rooted in capitalism prevents it from constituting a
possible transitional form to a new society. That is because capitalism, for Marx,
is itself the transitional form for a socialist reorganisation of social relations. Marx
writes, ‘Capitalist joint-stock companies as much as cooperative factories
should be viewed as transition forms from the capitalist mode of production
to the associated one, simply that in the one case the opposition is abolished
in a negative way, and in the other, in a positive way’.118
In Marx’s last discussion of a new society in Volume III of Capital, he speaks
of the kind of social relations that will directly characterise it. In one of the
most explicit discussions of a socialist society anywhere in his writings, he
states:
The realm of freedom really begins only when labour determined by
necessity and external expediency ends; it lies by its very nature beyond
the sphere of material production proper. Just as the savage must wrestle
with nature to satisfy his needs, to maintain and reproduce his life, so
must civilized man, and he must do so in all forms of society and under
all possible modes of production. This realm of natural necessity expands
with his development, because his needs do too; but the productive forces
to satisfy these expand at the same time. Freedom in this sphere, can consist
only in this, that socialized man, the associated producers, govern the human
metabolism with nature in a rational way, bringing it under their collective
control instead of being dominated by it as a blind power; accomplishing
it with the least expenditure of energy and in conditions most worthy and
appropriate of their human nature. But this always remains a realm of
necessity. The true realm of freedom, the development of human powers
as an end in itself, begins beyond it, though it can only flourish with this
realm of necessity as its basis.119
Thus, for Marx, the realm of freedom, begins when humanity no longer
has to define itself by labouring-activity. To be sure, he is not suggest-
ing that labour as such literally comes to an end. He explicitly states that
labour exists in all forms of society and under all possible modes of pro-
duction.120 In a truly free society, however, human life-activity is no longer
118.â•‡ Marx 1981a, p. 572.

119.â•‡ Marx 1981a, pp. 958–9.
120.â•‡ See Marx 1976e, p. 290.
defined by labour engaged in material production. It is not defined by external

or natural necessity.121
According to Marx, the amount of time engaged in material production
would be drastically reduced in the new society, thanks to technological inno-
vation and the development of the forces of production. At the same time,
labour, like all forms of human activity, would become freely associated and
not subject to the autonomous power of capital that operates behind the backs
of individuals.
Here is the most important determinant in Marx’s concept of the new soci-
ety: social relations must cease to operate independently of the self-activity
of the associated individuals. Marx will oppose any power – be it the state,
a social plan, or the market itself – that takes on a life of its own and util-
ises human powers as a mere means to its fruition and development. Marx’s
opposition to the inversion of subject and predicate constitutes the reason
for his opposition to all forms of value-production. It is also what grounds
his conception of socialism. Human power, he insists, must become a self-
sufficient end – it must cease to serve as a means to some other end. He will
project this concept even more explicitly in his last writings, which contain his
most detailed discussion of the content of a postcapitalist society.
121.â•‡ Marx’s statement renders implausible the claim made by N.R. Berki, that ‘In
Capital Marx more or less completely acquiesces in the continuing – and indeed,
permanent – superiority of nature over the human species. And correspondingly his
earlier vision of “labour” as integrated species-activity, as full and free individual
self-realization, is all but completely overshadowed by a decidedly pessimistic view
of labour as eternal toil and drudgery’. See Berki 1983, p. 134.
Chapter Four
Marx’s Late Writings on Postcapitalist Society
The impact of the Paris Commune on

Marx
There is no question that the Paris Commune of
1871 had an enormous impact on Marx. Although
it was restricted to the city of Paris and lasted only
six weeks, the Commune marked the first time in
Marx’s life that the working class seized hold of a
major urban area and attempted to reorganise social
relations in a revolutionary direction. Although he
was living in London at the time, Marx was in close
contact with events on the ground, thanks to his
network of correspondents and his role in the Inter-
national Workingmen’s Association, or First Inter-
national.1 In addition, he made an important study
of the Commune in his pamphlet The Civil War in
France.
Marx was deeply impressed with the liberatory
content of the Commune. In the matter of a few
weeks, the populace of Paris put an end to the Sec-
ond Empire of Louis Napoleon by eliminating the
standing army; stripped the police-force of its politi-
cal powers; established the separation of church and
state; organised the production and distribution
of foodstuffs and other goods through delibera-
tive bodies of workers; and arranged for municipal
officials to be democratically elected and subject to
1.â•‡ Marx composed The Civil War in France as an address of the General Council of the
International Workingmen’s Association (also known as the ‘First International’).
184 • Chapter Four
immediate recall. It placed ‘the whole initiative hitherto exercised by the

Stateâ•›.â•›.â•›.â•›into the hands of the Commune’. It compelled the ‘old centralised
government’ to ‘give way to the self-government of the producers’.2 All of
this was achieved without a single party or political tendency monopolising
power.3 For these reasons, Marx considered the Commune to be ‘a thoroughly
expansive political form, while all previous forms of government had been
thoroughly repressive’. He viewed it as ‘the political form at last discovered
under which to work out the economical emancipation of labour’.4
To get a sense of how far the Commune changed Marx’s perspectives on
revolution, recall that in the Communist Manifesto he had written, ‘The pro-
letariat will use its political supremacy to wrest, by degrees, all capital from
the bourgeoisie, to centralize all instruments of production in the hands
of the State, i.e., of the proletariat organised as the ruling class; and to increase
the total productive forces as rapidly as possible’.5 In contrast, in The Civil
War in France he writes, ‘But the working class cannot simply lay hold of the
ready-made State machinery and wield it for its own purposes’.6 His first
draft of the address notes that earlier revolutions were ‘forced to develop,
what absolute monarchy had commenced, the centralization and organiza-
tion of state power, and to expand the circumference and the attributes of the
state power’.7 He adds, ‘All revolutions thus only perfected the state machin-
ery instead of throwing off this deadening incubus.’8 The Paris Commune, in
contrast, sought to dismantle the machinery of the state through decentralised,
democratic control of society by the freely-associated populace:
This was, therefore, a Revolution not against this or that, legitimate,
constitutional, republican, or Imperialist form of State Power. It was a
Revolution against the State itself, this supernaturalist abortion of society,
a resumption by the people for the people, of its own social life. It was
not a revolution to transfer it from one fraction of the ruling classes to
the other, but a Revolution to break down this horrid machinery of class
domination itself.9
2.â•‡ Marx 1986c, p. 332.

3.â•‡ Numerous clubs, organisations, and political parties participated in the Com-
mune. The most predominant political tendency was the Proudhonists. Marx’s own
followers represented a relatively small minority among the Communards.
4.â•‡ Marx 1986a, p. 334.
6.â•‡ Marx 1986c, p. 328.
7.â•‡ Marx 1986b, p. 484.
8.â•‡ Ibid.
9.â•‡ Marx 1986b, p. 486.
Marx’s Late Writings on Postcapitalist Society • 185
All of this marks a distinct departure from the view of the state expressed in
the Manifesto. The Paris Commune led Marx to conclude, more explicitly than
ever before, that the state is not a neutral instrument that could be used to
‘wrest’ power from the oppressors. Its very form is despotic. In recognising this,
the Communards did not aspire to centralise power into the hands of a state of
their own.10 Instead, they aimed for ‘the destruction of the State power which
claimed to be the embodiment of that unity independent of, and superior to,
the nation itself, from which it was but a parasitic excrescence’.11
Far from being a neutral instrument, the state is a disfiguring outgrowth
of society. Society gives birth to this monstrosity, which takes on a life of its
own and operates behind its back. ‘The centralized state machineryâ•›.â•›.â•›.â•›entoils
(inmeshes) the living civil society like a boa constrictor’.12 A social revolu-
tion aims to reverse this reversal: ‘The Communal Constitution would have
restored to the social body all the forces hitherto absorbed by the State para-
site feeding upon, and clogging the free movement of, society’.13 The Paris
Commune is therefore not a new form of the state. Instead, ‘this new Com-
muneâ•›.â•›.â•›.â•›breaks the modern State power’.14 It aspires to ‘the reabsorption of
the State power by society’.15
The Paris Commune was unlike anything that had emerged in previous
revolutions. Marx generalises its experience by contending that it discloses the
proper political form that can enable revolutions to break free from the despo-
tism of capital: ‘The Commune was therefore to serve as a lever for uprooting
the economical foundations upon which rests the existence of classes, and
therefore of class rule’.16 Since the new society consists of freely-associated
producers planning and allocating social wealth, it must be created by means
of such a free association. The vision is fundamentally democratic. ‘Such is
the Commune – the political form of the social emancipation, of the liberation of
labour from the usurpation of the (slaveholding) monopolies of the means of
labour’.17
10.â•‡ Marx praises the Commune for centralising legislative and executive functions
in the hands of its self-governing popular assemblies, but this is quite different from
centralising these branches of government into a single agency of the state. One of
the most outstanding achievements of the Commune was its degree of the decentrali-
sation of power.
11.â•‡ Marx 1986c, p. 332.
12.â•‡ Marx 1986b, p. 483.
13.â•‡ Marx 1986c, p. 333.
14.â•‡ Ibid.
15.â•‡ Marx 1986b, p. 487.
16.â•‡ Marx 1986c, p. 334.
17.â•‡ Marx 1986b, p. 490.
This stands at quite a distance from the view of the state as the princi-
pal instrument of revolutionary transformation, which tended to dominate
efforts at social transformation in the twentieth century. The Commune was
a cooperative form of administration that was not weighed down by being
dominated by one political party or tendency, centralised or otherwise. Yet it
managed to institute a series of wide-ranging transformations in social rela-
tions that have attracted the imagination of people around the world ever
since.18 Marx now conceives of an association of freely-associated coopera-
tives as the most effective form for making a transition to a new society.19
The Commune was the political lever or form for the transformation of the
despotic relations of capital, but it did not yet constitute the transcendence of
capital – nor could it in the mere six weeks of its existence. Marx never claimed
that Paris was a socialist society under the Commune. It rather marked the
self-government of the producers on a municipal scale. It could only have
constituted a transitional form to socialism had it been allowed to survive
and spread. As Marx notes in his comments on cooperatives in Volume III of
Capital, a liberatory form that exists within a capitalist context can still repre-
sent, taken together with other factors, the transition to a new society, so long
as a number of historical conditions are present.
Marx himself notes, ‘The working class did not expect miracles from the
Commune. They have no ready-made utopias to introduce par décret du
peuple’.20
They know that in order to work out their own emancipation, and along
with it that higher form to which present society is irresistibly tending by its
economical agencies, they will have to pass through long struggles, through
a series of historic processes, transforming circumstances and men. They
have no ideas to realise, but to set free the elements of the new society with
which the old collapsing bourgeois society itself is pregnant.21
Note that Marx does not say that the formation of specific social structures
will by themselves produce the liberated individual; instead, he says that
the transformation of individuals, through long and difficult struggles, is
18.â•‡ Among these were the dramatic changes it began to introduce in gender-
relations. For more on this, see Thomas 2007.
19.â•‡ As one recent study puts it, ‘Therefore, when Marx criticized Bakunin, he did
it not as an authoritarian. Rather, he took the antimony that Proudhon pointed out
much more seriously than Bakunin did. What is more, Marx praised the Paris Com-
mune, carried out mainly by Proudhonists, in which he found the vision of “possible
communism”â•›.â•›.â•›.â•›Marx also speculated that an “association of associations” would
replace the capitalist nation-state’. See Karatani 2003, p. 178.
20.â•‡ Marx 1986c, p. 334.
21.â•‡ Marx 1986c, p. 335.
needed in order to effectively form social institutions that can realise their
social potential. While the seeds of the new society are contained in the old
one, people must transform themselves through a long and arduous series
of revolutionary struggles in order to bring them to fruition.
At several points, Marx emphasises not only the achievements but also the
limitations of the Commune – of which, he contends, the Communards were
fully aware:
They know that the superseding of the economical conditions of the slavery
of labour by the conditions of free and associated labour can only be the
progressive work of time, (that economical transformation) that they require
not only for a change of distribution, but a new organization of production,
or rather the delivery (setting free) of the social forms of production in
present organised labour (engendered by present industry) of the trammels
of slavery, of their present class character, and their harmonious national
and international coordination.22
Marx does not hesitate to emphasise how laborious the process of creating
a new society is, since it depends not only upon national, but international
cooperation, as well as transforming not only the relations of distribution, but
also those of production. Marx was outraged by the bloody suppression of the
Commune by the forces of reaction. Yet, not long afterwards, he became even
more disappointed at the realisation that even his own followers had failed
to learn its lessons. Nowhere is the depth of Marx’s dissatisfaction expressed
more sharply than in his work composed four years after the Commune’s
defeat, the Critique of the Gotha Programme.
The Critique of the Gotha Programme

Marx’s Critique of the Gotha Programme of 1875 contains his most sustained,
detailed, and explicit discussion of a postcapitalist society. It was not written,
however, as part of an effort to provide a blueprint as to the kind of society
that would follow capitalism. Rather, its composition was driven by organi-
sational considerations within the socialist movement. The German socialist
movement comprised two tendencies in the 1860s and 1870s. One was the
General Union of German Workers, whose founder was Ferdinand Lassalle.
It was the first nationwide socialist organisation of the German proletariat,
and its energetic and charismatic leader helped make it the largest and best-
known socialist organisation in Europe, except for the International itself, of
22.â•‡ Marx 1986b, p. 491.

which it was a part. After a period of collaboration, Lassalle and Marx had
a bitter breakup in the 1860s, largely occasioned by what Marx considered
Lassalle’s unprincipled interest in forging alliances with sections of German
officialdom in order to secure organisational legitimacy for his party and
social reforms.
The other tendency of the German workers’ movement were the much-
smaller Eisenachers (named after the city in which they were founded), led by
August Bebel and Wilhelm Liebknecht, who considered themselves Marx’s
followers. In 1875, the two groups entered into unity-negotiations in the city
of Gotha, and formed a united organisation against Marx’s wishes, based on
a brief programme named after the site of the conference. This marked the
birth of what later was known as the German Social-Democratic Party, which
became the largest socialist organisation in European history after Marx’s
death.
Marx was furious when he read the Gotha Programme, which he consid-
ered to be a complete capitulation to Lassallean principles.23 He threatened
to break off relations with his German followers unless they disavowed
the decisions made at the unity-congress. They refused to do so, but Marx
decided not to go through with his threat and in the end chose not to make his
denunciation public, in part because Bismarck had just jailed several leading
Eisenachers.
There were a number of formulations in the Gotha Programme that infu-
riated Marx,24 whether on the state or the class-struggle, but none more so
than its brief discussion of the alternative to capitalism. Point three of the
Programme stated, ‘The emancipation of labour demands the raising of the
means of labour to the common property of society and the collective regu-
lation of the total labour with a fair distribution of the proceeds of labour’.25
23.â•‡ Lassalle had died a decade earlier, in 1864. Although the extent of Marx’s dif-
ferences with Lassalle became public knowledge only decades after his death, when
his correspondence began to be published, many of the Eisenachers were well aware
of Marx’s longstanding hostility to Lassallean conceptions and practices, among
which was Lassalle’s theory of ‘the iron law of wages’. Many commentators on Marx
have sought to minimise these differences. One exception to this can be found in
Dunayevskaya 1981 and 2000.
24.â•‡ Marx particularly castigates the programme’s opening declaration, ‘Labour is
the source of all wealth’. He counters, ‘Labour is not the source of all wealth. Nature is
just as much the source of use valuesâ•›.â•›.â•›.â•›as labour, which itself is only the manifesta-
tion of a force of nature, human labour power’. Labour is instead the source of value.
Despite Marx’s criticism, the false conflation of wealth and value has been ubiquitous
in discussions of Marx’s work for over a century. See Marx 1989d, p. 81.
25.â•‡ Marx 1989d, p. 83.
Here, the Gotha Programme was not referring to distribution of the ele-
ments of production. Rather, it was referring to the distribution of the social
product, which Marx saw as a wholly secondary and subsidiary matter. In
fact, the Gotha Programme failed to refer at all to production-relations or their
transformation. Instead, it focused on the ‘fair’ distribution of the products of
labour in a new society.
Marx sharply attacks the claims, as he puts it, that in a future communist
society every worker must receive his ‘undiminished’ Lassallean ‘proceeds
of labour’.26 He denies that workers would receive an ‘undiminished’ share
of the total social product, since a number of deductions would be needed
to pay for depreciation of the means of production, the expansion of produc-
tion, and for an insurance-fund against accidents. None of these factors can
be calculated in advance, since they depend on an assortment of contingent
conditions. Moreover, additional deductions from the now-‘diminished’ pro-
ceeds of labour would be needed to pay for the costs of social administration,
schools and health-services, and compensation for those too old or too ill to
work. These would increase ‘considerably in comparison with present-day
society and it grows in proportion as the new society develops’.27 Marx thor-
oughly rejects the claim that workers in a new society would obtain the full
equivalent of the ‘value’ of their labour.
Marx is clearly irritated at having to write this criticism of the Gotha Pro-
gramme. As he puts it in a letter to one of the Eisenachers, Wilhelm Bracke, ‘it
was by no means a pleasure to write such a lengthy screed’.28 He is not issuing
his critique in order to delineate the nature of distribution in the new society;
the matter is clearly of secondary interest to him. But he is deeply concerned
at the implications of the Gotha Programme’s focus on distribution to the
exclusion of emphasising the need to transform relations of production.
For this reason, he directly addresses the form of collective ownership of
the means of production in a society that does manage to radically transform
production-relations – a matter that was not discussed in the Gotha Pro-
gramme itself. He writes,
Within the collective society based on common ownership of the means
of production, the producers do not exchange their products; just as little
does the labour employed on the product appear here as the value of these
products, as a material quality possessed by them, since now, in contrast
26.â•‡ Marx 1989d, p. 84.

27.â•‡ Marx 1989d, p. 85.
28.â•‡ Marx 1989d, p. 77.
to capitalist society, individual labour no longer exists in an indirect fashion

but directly as a component part of the total labour.29
Again, his categories of directly versus indirectly social labour are brought
to bear upon the issue of a postcapitalist society.
Marx leaves no doubt that his description of such a state of affairs rep-
resents a socialist or communist society, which to him were indistinguish-
able terms: ‘What we are dealing with here is a communist society, not as it
has developed on its own foundations, but on the contrary, just as it emerges
from capitalist society, which is thus in every respect, economically, morally,
and intellectually, still stamped with the birth-marks of the old society from
whose womb it emerges’.30
This represents the first time in any of his writings that Marx explicitly
refers to two ‘phases’ of a new society. These are not two distinct stages that
are respectively termed ‘socialism’ and ‘communism’. For Marx, the terms
‘socialism’ and ‘communism’ – along with ‘free association’, ‘society of free
individuality’, or simply ‘the new society’ – are completely interchangeable.31
The later notion that ‘socialism’ and ‘communism’ represent distinct stages of
social development – a staple of Stalinist dogma – was alien to Marx’s thought
and only entered the lexicon of ‘Marxism’ after his death.
To see why Marx contends that neither value-production nor the exchange
of products characterises the initial phase of socialism or communism, it is
necessary to closely examine his statement that individual labour exists as a
direct component part of the sum of social labour in a new society. The total
sum of labour can be treated as an aggregate, just like the amount of labour
performed by an individual can be treated as a discrete unit. In the capitalist
mode of production, individual labour exists indirectly as a part of the sum
of total labour, since the only labour that counts is that which corresponds to
the average amount of time socially necessary to create a product. Individual
labour that fails to conform to that average is socially useless and expend-
able. It does not directly figure into the aggregate. This situation prevails so
long as actual labour-time is subsumed by socially-necessary labour-time.
Individual labour can exist or count only indirectly ‘as a component part of
the total labour’ so long as capitalist relations of production and distribution
are maintained.
With socialism or communism, on the other hand, the disregard of actual
labour-time in favour of socially-necessary labour-time is abolished. The
29.â•‡ Marx 1989d, p. 85.

30.â•‡ Ibid.
31.â•‡ For more on this, see Chattopadhyay 2010.
exertion of concrete acts of labour in producing use-values, performed by

freely-associated individuals, becomes the one and only expression of living
labour. No longer does a force operate behind the backs of the producers –
socially-necessary labour-time – that renders their individual activity useless
or unproductive if it fails to meet an abstract standard. The dominance of time
as an abstract standard is shattered through the formation of freely-associated
production-relations, in which the producers organise the manner, form, and
content of their activity on basis of their actual capabilities. The replacement of
the dictatorship of abstract time with time as the space for human development serves
as the basis for a new kind of labour – directly social labour. With this momen-
tous transformation, the split between abstract and concrete labour is healed.
With the elimination of the dual character of labour, the substance of value –
abstract labour – drops out of existence. As a result, value-production itself
ceases to exist. Therefore, the ‘labour employed on the products’ therefore no
longer appears in the form of ‘the value of these products’.
With the abolition of the conditions of value-production, value’s form of
appearance – exchange-value – likewise ceases to exist. Value must take on a
form of appearance distinct from itself, as exchange-value; but exchange-value
can only be the appearance of something if there is something to appear. Exchange-
value is readily visible, but it is far more difficult, as Capital shows, to ‘track
down’ the value immanent in it. So difficult is it to discern value indepen-
dent of its manifestations that it appears to be a property of the physicality of
things, instead of the peculiar social form of labour in capitalism. Yet, with the
abolition of this peculiar social form, the conditions for the possibility of both
value and exchange-value cease to exist. Labour now becomes directly social
on a free basis, instead of indirectly social, as in capitalism.
However, if value and exchange-value cease to exist, how is the mutual
and universal exchangeability of products of labour possible? As we have
seen, products of labour, as well as labour-power, can be rendered mutually-
exchangeable only if there is an abstract denominator or principle of equality
that makes such exchangeability possible. The universal exchange of discrete
products requires a commensurate quality or substance: ‘There can be no
exchange without equality, and no equality without commensurability’, as
noted over two thousand years ago by Aristotle.32 This equal quality is value,
and abstract labour is its substance. But the production-relations of a socialist
or communist society eliminate abstract labour. The actions and predisposi-
tions of individuals are no longer subject to an abstract average that operates
regardless of them. With this transformation, which involves the abolition of
32.â•‡ Aristotle 2002, p. 90 [1133b16–19].

alienated labour, value-production comes to an end. How is it possible, then,

for products of labour to be mutually-exchangeable in such a society? The
answer is that they can not be mutually exchangeable. This is why Marx writes
that, even in the initial phase of a socialist or communist society, ‘the produc-
ers do not exchange their products’.
This indicates that a socialist or communist society, as Marx envisages it,
eliminates the possibility of a market in which products of labour are mutu-
ally and universally exchanged. A commodity-market cannot exist if there is
no substance that renders different magnitudes qualitatively equal. Once the
breach between abstract and concrete labour is healed, the substance of value
is annulled, and with it, the market itself.
Does this mean that markets in any possible sense of the word cannot exist
in a new society? Marx does not directly address the question. However,
given the logic of his argument, it does not necessarily follow that the answer
is in the affirmative. First, as Marx often notes, markets existed long before
capitalism. The mere existence of some form of market, at least in a limited
and subsidiary sense, is not therefore ipso facto evidence of capitalist relations
of production. Second, the object of Marx’s critique of capitalism is not the
market; it is the relations of production and the distribution of the conditions
of production. Third, in the Critique of the Gotha Programme, Marx is respond-
ing to what he considers the erroneous theoretical statements in a programme
of a political party. He does not intend for his critique to be read as a detailed
blueprint that accounts for any and all possible conditions and institutions of
a postcapitalist society.
This much is clear: a generalised commodity- or labour-market, in which
products of labour are mutually interchangeable, cannot exist if the substance
of value, abstract labour, ceases to exist. A society cannot be characterised or
dominated by market-transactions or a market of any kind if the conditions
for its possibility are not present. And the condition of possibility for a market
is the existence of indirectly social labour – a condition that is annulled in the
new society. It is one thing, however, for a generalised commodity-market to
exist, and quite another for far-more restricted markets to persist (especially
temporarily) in a completely subordinate and subsidiary role in comparison to
a society’s governing social relations.
A few years before the Critique of the Gotha Programme, Marx wrote in The
Civil War in France:
If cooperative production is not to remain a sham and a snare; if it is
to supersede the capitalist system; if united cooperative societies are to
regulate national production upon a common plan, thus taking it under
their own control, and putting an end to the constant anarchy and periodical
convulsions which are the fatality of capitalist production – what else,

gentlemen, would it be but Communism, ‘possible’ Communism?33
For cooperative production not to be ‘a sham and a snare’, it has to be under

the control of the workers themselves. But what does he mean by control?
Surely, Marx is referring to effective as well as formal control. And the work-
ers would not have effective control of their cooperative production if an
independent pricing mechanism acted in disregard of their collective delib-
erations by dictating the manner, form, and nature of their labouring activity.
Marx’s conception of socialism is fundamentally democratic, and to be mean-
ingful, such a democracy must exist on the economic as well as the political
level. Throughout his writings, Marx never wavers from his emphasis on the
need for the producers to have power and control over the process of forming
the social product. He is conceiving of a new society in which the products of
human activity can no longer take on an autonomous power independent of
the producers. He opposes the existence of a market insofar as its existence
implies the existence of such an autonomous force.
As Marx repeatedly stresses, the process of creating a society is a long and
labourious one. The effort extends far beyond the moment of revolution itself.
It is impractical to presume that a new society can emerge sui generis, without
bearing the birthmarks of the society from which it emerges. At the same time,
Marx wishes to emphasise that a socialist or communist society represents a
qualitative break from the conditions and social forms that define capitalism.
This two-fold concern governs his discussion through the rest of the Critique
of the Gotha Programme.
As noted earlier, Marx explicitly states that his discussion thus far is of ‘a
communist society, not as it has developed on its own foundations, but on
the contrary, just as it emerges from capitalist society’, and is ‘still stamped
with the birth-marks of the old society from whom womb it emerges’. So how
would workers be remunerated in the lower phase of a new society? Since,
for Marx, a radical break occurs between capitalism and even the most initial
phase of socialism or communism, it is crucial that the defining characteris-
tics of capitalism be eliminated from the outset. And one of the most defining
characteristics of capitalism, for Marx, is wage-labour. He makes it clear that
there is no place for it in the initial phase of a new society by spelling out
an alternative form of remuneration. This form is as follows: each individual
gives to society ‘his individual quantum of labour’, which is measured in ‘the
sum of hours of work’. The ‘individual labour-time of the individual’ repre-
sents the individual’s share in society, and the individual receives back from
33.â•‡ Marx 1986c, p. 335.

society a corresponding amount of means of subsistence. ‘The individual

producer receives back from society – after the deductions have been made
– exactly what he gives to it. What he has given to it is his individual quan-
tum of labour’.34 Individuals receive from society a voucher or token that they
have ‘furnished such and such an amount of labour (after deducing his labour
for the common funds)’ and from it obtains from ‘the social stock of means of
consumption as much as the amount of labour costs’.35 Remuneration is based
on an ‘equal standard’ – the actual amount of labour-time performed by the
freely-associated individuals.
Marx is not saying that the worker’s labour is computed on the basis of a
social average of labour-time. Here, labour-time simply refers to the amount
of actual hours of work performed by the individual. Remuneration is based
on ‘the individual labour time of the individual producer’. This is completely
different from capitalism, where remuneration is based on socially-necessary
labour-time. As Marx puts it, ‘The same amount of labour which he has given
to society in one form he receives back in another’.36 This also would include
kinds of work that are not valued under capitalism, such as women’s domes-
tic labour, child-rearing, and pre-school education.
Marx states, ‘Here obviously the same principle prevails as that which reg-
ulates the exchange of commodities, as far as this is the exchange of equal
values’. He is referring to values in the generic sense of an exchange of equal
quantities, of equal sums of actual (concrete) labour-time. Yet the ‘content and
form’ of this exchange are radically distinct compared with what occurs in
capitalism, since ‘nothing can pass to the ownership of individuals except
individual means of consumption’.37
Why does he compare remuneration by labour-time to the ‘principle’ of
commodity-exchange? Simply because there is an exchange of two items of
equal worth: one hour of actual labour is exchanged for goods or services pro-
duced in the same amount of time, just two commodities are exchanged on the
basis of an equality between them. However, the exchange of labour-time for
goods and services in the initial phase of a new society is radically different
in form and content from capitalist commodity-relations, since the former is
based on the equality of concrete magnitudes posited by the producers – not
on an abstract average that operates independently of them.
It is important to emphasise that Marx is not suggesting that remunera-
tion in this lower phase of socialism or communism is based on the level of
34.â•‡ Marx 1989d, p. 86.

35.â•‡ Ibid.
36.â•‡ Ibid. My emphasis.
37.â•‡ Ibid.
productive output by the labourer. Rather, it is based on ‘the natural measure

of labour’38 – time, the actual number of hours performed by the individual.
The difference between labour and labour-time is a critical analytical distinc-
tion, and conflating the two readily leads to misconstruing Marx’s position.
He is not suggesting that the operative principle of the lower phase of social-
ism or communism is ‘from each according to their ability, to each according
to their work’. No such formulation appears either in the Critique or in any
of Marx’s work. Yet it became the widespread interpretation of Marx in the
statist-‘communist’ régimes of the twentieth century. As János Kornai writes,
Under classical socialism the principle of socialist distribution stated in
every textbook is, ‘To each according to his work’. But the question remains
of how performance can be measured and what the income proportionate
with the performance should be. To an extent the principle ‘distribution
according to work’ applies under capitalism as well, at least in the case of
earned income. There performance is measured and rewards are set mainly
(but not exclusively) by an anonymous, decentralized process: the labour
market, on which the relative wages emerge. Whereas in a classical socialist
economy the question of what income is due for what quantity and type of
work is decided arbitrarily by persons appointed to do so.39
Kornai is correct that ‘distribution according to work’ became the justification

by which the centralised command-economies in the USSR, Eastern Europe
and China imposed draconian social control upon the workforce. Far from
representing a form of the ‘new’ society, it became an administrative formula
for getting the workers to produce under degrading conditions for the sake
of ‘catching up with the West’. He is also correct that ‘distribution according
to work’ is not at odds with the principle by which capitalism operates.
Kornai fails to notice, however, that Marx was fully aware of this, which
is why no such formulation or conception enters his own discussion of a postcapi-
talist society.40 Marx is not concerned with the form by which the worker is
compelled to provide greater and greater amounts of work for the control-
ling agents of society. He is not concerned with whether the mechanism that
38.â•‡ Engels used this phrase in his Anti-Dühring in explaining why distribution
according to actual time worked in a new society does not imply value-production.
See Engels 1987, p. 288. The book was written shortly after Marx composed the Critique
of the Gotha Programme, and Marx was very familiar with its content.
39.â•‡ Kornai 1992, p. 324.
40.â•‡ Although Kornai quotes from the Critique of the Gotha Programme, he neglects
to mention Marx’s all-important concept of remuneration based on labour-time. It is
ironic that many critics of ‘actually-existing socialism’ fail to take issue with its central
ideological premise – namely, the claim that it operated according to principles laid
down by Marx.
compels the workers to produce more than they consume is accomplished

through the arbitrary vehicle of the market or through the equally arbitrary
whims of government-officials. Both forms ‘reward’ labourers based on their
productive output; they are made to produce more and more within a unit of
time in accordance with the average amount of time that it takes to produce
the product on the world-market. In this sense, both forms rest upon the exis-
tence of wage-labour, which is inseparable from the despotic plan of capital.
In direct contrast, Marx’s concept of socialism or communism is premised
upon the abolition of wage-labour and of capital and value-production, as
seen from his discussion of remuneration by labour-time in the Critique of the
Gotha Programme. The worker receives an amount of means of subsistence
based on the unit of time worked, not on the amount of productive output
within that unit. Labour-time is a varying and contingent standard, based on
a given hour of actual labour performed by the individual in specific circum-
stances. The workers are not ‘paid’ according to whether or not their labour
conforms to some invariable standard over which they have no control. The
latter, distribution according to labour, is entirely consistent with value-pro-
duction, whereas the former, distribution according to actual labour-time,
represents a break from value-production altogether.
Yet if this is the case, why does Marx write in the Critique, ‘Labour, to serve
as measure, must be defined by its duration or intensity’?41 Does this imply
‘distribution according to work’? At issue is what Marx means by ‘intensity’.
Many have assumed that Marx is referring to how much is produced in a
given unit of time (for instance, one worker who makes three shoes an hour
would receive less goods from the common storehouse than another who
makes six shoes an hour. And one who makes twelve shoes an hour would
‘earn’ more than both). In this scenario, workers are not being remunerated
for their labour-time but for their labour-output. This would mean that the
governing principle of such a society would be ‘from each according to their
ability, to each according to their work’.
Yet if this were the case, it is hard to see how the lower phase of social-
ism or communism would be significantly different from what prevails under
capitalism, even if the workers had political control over the economic process. As in
capitalism, their performance would be measured by the intensity of labour,
as reflected in the wage-relation. Hence, ‘the workers in association [would]
become their own capitalist, i.e. they use the means of production to valorize
their own labour’.42 So why does Marx state that ‘labour, to serve as a measure,
41.â•‡ Marx 1989d, p. 86.

42.â•‡ Marx 1981a, p. 740.
must be defined by its intensity or duration’? I would suggest that the answer
is that by intensity Marx is not referring to the quantity of output within a
given unit of time. Rather, he is referring to the output of energy in a given unit
of time. For instance, a teacher of autistic children may expend more energy in
four hours of instruction than someone who spends the same amount of time
teaching non-autistic children. Should not the former be compensated for the
intensity of their labour? The added intensity can be taken into account with-
out violating the principle of remuneration according to labour-time so long as
the output of energy, and not the output of the quantity of the product, is taken as the
determining factor.43 In this scenario, the society of freely-associated producers
would need to determine if a particular kind of labour requires more energy
or intensity than another, and if so, how much it should be quantified in terms
of actual labour-time. Such a determination could involve a good deal of dis-
cussion and debate. But there would be no value-production, since produc-
tion would not occur in accordance with an abstract average that operates
behind the backs of the producers. On these grounds, the claim that Marx’s
discussion of ‘intensity or duration’ implies ‘distribution according to work’
becomes eminently implausible.
Marx’s discussion in the Critique of the Gotha Programme is his most detailed
discussion of a postcapitalist society, but it is entirely consistent with his pre-
vious writings on the issue in the drafts of Capital as well as in its published
versions.
His critique of Proudhonian proposals for utilising time-chits or labour-
vouchers in The Poverty of Philosophy and the Grundrisse is based on the confla-
tion of actual labour-time with socially-necessary labour-time. He rejects such
proposals because they are premised upon the existing system of commodity-
production. Exchange-relations cannot be rendered transparent or rational by
being grafted onto a system of commodity-production that is itself irrational
and mystified. Marx’s sharp critique of his followers in 1875 for accepting the
Lassallean notion that workers can obtain the full value of their product car-
ries forth the critique he had earlier made of the Proudhonists for presuming
that an ‘equitable’ distribution of the products of labour is consistent with
value-production.
43.â•‡ It may seem perverse to refer to ‘quantity of output’ when it comes to some-
thing like teaching, but this is precisely the direction in which the US educational
system is going, as seen in the heightened emphasis on standardised testing. Students
are increasingly treated as commodities, and the greater the quantitative output of
students with high grades, the better the chance a teacher has of earning greater
remuneration through promotion. Needless to say, all this is completely adequate to
the concept of capital.
Marx’s Critique of the Gotha Programme is also remarkably consistent with

his comments about the new society in the first chapter of Volume I of Capital.
This is especially seen from his statement in the Critique, ‘Here obviously the
same principle prevails as that which regulates the exchange of commodi-
ties.â•›.â•›.â•›.‘ Marx is restating his formulation at the end of Chapter One of Vol-
ume I of Capital, which stated, ‘We shall assume, but only for the sake of a
parallel with the production of commodities, that the share of each individual
producer in the means of subsistence is determined by his labour time’.44 In
neither case is Marx suggesting that value-production prevails under ‘social-
ism’. A fundamentally different content and form are operative in the new
society, but they can be compared to the exchange of commodities insofar as
an exchange of equal determinants occurs in both cases. What makes the two
radically distinct is that in the new society the exchange of labour-time for
social products is transparent, whereas in the old society it is not. And it is not
transparent in the old society because labour is indirectly social. This is of car-
dinal importance, for it signifies that production-relations in the new society
have become radically transformed.45
Marx’s discussion in the Critique of the Gotha Programme is also consistent
with his earlier discussions throughout the three volumes of Capital. These
works emphasise the difference between actual labour-time and socially-nec-
essary labour-time. These works state that remuneration in the society will at
least initially be based on the labour-time of the individual, not on labour-out-
put that is governed by an abstraction. Neither indicates that exchange-value
or value exists in the new society. Moreover, Volume II of Capital explicitly
endorses remuneration based on labour-tickets or vouchers along basically
the same lines as the 1875 Critique. Volume II also states that money ceases to
be the medium of social interaction in the new society and that the vouchers
do not circulate, that is, they do not augment value.
There is, however, an important difference between the Critique of the Gotha
Programme and these earlier writings, in that the Critique suggests for the first
time that the postcapitalist relations under discussion thus far in Marx’s work
44.â•‡ Marx 1976e, p. 172.

45.â•‡ Although a considerable amount of critical commentary has appeared on
Marx’s Critique of the Gotha Programme, almost none of it discusses his concept of the
replacement of indirect social labour by direct social labour. This is true of Berki 1983,
pp. 150–61, Hollander 2008, pp. 386–7, and Campbell 1996, pp. 206–8. The neglect
of Marx’s concept of direct versus indirect social labour also characterises many of
those who have attempted to appropriate Marx’s 1875 Critique for conceptualising a
postcapitalist society. See especially Neurath 2005.
had pertained to the initial phase of the new society, which still is defective
from the vantage-point of what eventually follows it.46
The initial phase of socialism or communism is defective for a number of
reasons. Some degree of social inequality would exist, since some individu-
als would work more hours than others and would therefore obtain a larger
amount of the means of consumption. Likewise, an individual who produces
more in a given hour than another would not receive greater remuneration
than one who labours for the same amount of time. Since ‘one man is superior
to another physically or mentally and so supplies more labour in the same
time, or can work for a longer period of time’,47 the levels of remuneration
would be unequal. Most important of all, remuneration takes into consid-
eration ‘a certain side only’ of individuals – their contribution in terms of
labour-time – ‘everything else being ignored’.48 Since labour-time – albeit in
the radically-altered form of actual and not average labour-time – governs
the distribution of the elements of production, social existence is still based
on natural necessity. Marx therefore writes, ‘Hence, equal right here is still in
principle – bourgeois right, although principle and practice are no longer at
loggerheads, while the exchange of equivalents in commodity exchange only
exists on the average and not in the individual case’.49 He introduces an impor-
tant note of caution here, however: ‘But these defects are inevitable in the first
phase of communist society as it is when it has just emerged from capitalist
society. Right can never be higher than the economic structure and its cultural
development which this determines’.50
As Marx states in Volume III of Capital, ‘The realm of freedom really begins
only when labour determined by necessity and external expediency ends; it
lies by its very nature beyond the sphere of material production proper’.51 True
46.â•‡ One exception to this is Marx’s discussion of the ‘realm of freedom’ at the
end of Volume III of Capital. ‘The true realm of freedom, the development of human
powers as an end in itself’, resonates with Marx’s 1875 discussion of a higher phase
of communism.
47.â•‡ Marx 1989d, p. 86.
48.â•‡ Marx 1989d, p. 87. Marx is not suggesting by this that the only ‘side’ of individu-
als that matters in the lower phase of socialism or communism is their contribution
in terms of labour-time. He is suggesting that this is all that matters when it comes
to deciding upon how they are remunerated. Remuneration, as a factor of distribution,
is a secondary and subsidiary issue for Marx. He is therefore not suggesting that
what governs remuneration defines all social relations. In Marx’s view, a socialist or
communist society considers individuals from many sides. Their role as labourers is
not the only, or even the most important aspect. It is capitalism, not socialism, that
views individuals only in terms of their level of productive output.
49.â•‡ Marx 1989d, p. 86.
50.â•‡ Marx 1989d, p. 87.
51.â•‡ Marx 1981a, pp. 958–9.
freedom represents a higher phase in which society is no longer measured by

labour-time or defined by material production. This higher phase is ‘the devel-
opment of human power as an end in itself’.52 At that point, ‘a certain side’ of
the individual will no longer determine the distribution of the elements of pro-
duction. Production and distribution, like social relations as a whole, would
instead be based on the totality of the individual’s needs and capacities.
Marx discusses the radically different distributive principle that governs
a higher phase of communism53 as follows: ‘From each according to their
abilities, to each according to their needs!’ This represents a significant devel-
opment as compared with the lower phase, since distribution no longer oper-
ates on the basis of an exchange of equivalents. The lower phase represents a
radical departure from commodity-production, since there is an exchange of
concrete, sensuous equivalents – so many hours of labour in exchange for so
many goods and services produced in that amount of actual time. But no such
exchange occurs in a higher phase of socialism or communism. ‘From each accord-
ing to their abilities, to each according to their needs’ is not a quid pro quo. It
is not as if one’s needs are met only to the extent that they correspond to the
expression of a given set of abilities. If such a principle prevailed, human rela-
tions would still be governed by natural necessity and external expediency.
Society would remain governed by material production. But the true realm of
freedom lies beyond all of this.
Moreover, a higher phase of communism is distinguished from the lower
phase in that labour-time no longer serves as a measure. Even in the lower
phase, of course, labour-time does not exist as a measure in the same way
as socially-necessary labour-time does in capitalism. As Plato once famously
noted, ‘nothing that is imperfect is the measure of anything’.54 Socially-
necessary labour-time is a ‘perfect’ standard or measure, since even though
its magnitude is constantly shifting and changing, it confronts the producers
as a fixed form in the market that is not beholden to their particular needs
and desires. Actual labour-time, on the other hand, is a very different kind
of measure. It is imperfect since is it calculated on the basis of the varied and
changing actions of discrete individuals. It does not confront the producers
as a fixed form that is not beholden to their particular needs and desires.
52.â•‡ Marx 1981a, p. 959.

53.â•‡ As Chattopadhyay 2010 points out, Marx refers to a higher phase, not the higher
phase. He also never refers to this higher phrase as an ultimate or conclusive stage.
As I see it, this is consistent with Marx’s earlier formulation from 1844 that ‘com-
munism as such is not the goal of human development, the form of human society’.
Marx does not appear to have ever endorsed the notion that there is an endpoint or
culmination of human history.
54.â•‡ Plato 1961, p. 739 [504c2–3].
Nevertheless, by the time we reach a higher phase of socialism or commu-

nism, actual labour-time too ceases to be a measure. There is no longer a need
for labour in any form to serve as a standard or measure.
This does not mean that labour as such vanishes in a higher phase of social-
ism or communism. Marx explicitly states that in such a higher phase, labour
would no longer be ‘only a means of life but life’s prime want’.55 Labour is
now radically-transformed as compared with capitalism, since it serves not
as a means to an end but as an end in itself. In a higher phase of socialism
or communism, labour is fully inseparable from the individual’s self-activity
and self-development. It becomes a self-sufficient end.
It is not hard to see that Marx’s vision of a higher phase of socialism or
communism requires a momentous material and intellectual transformation.
It certainly does not emerge overnight! Marx explicitly states that it cannot
come into existence without a whole series of preconditions. These include
the end of the separation between mental and manual labour; the transforma-
tion of labour from a means to an end to an end in itself; a dramatic increase of
the productive forces such as to alleviate the possibility of poverty and want;
and ‘the all-round development of the individual’. The ‘subjective’ development
of the individual is as important a precondition of a truly new society as such ‘objec-
tive’ factors as the development of the forces of production. Marx does not specify
any time-frame for these transformations. He is always cautious about getting
ahead of what individuals could or could not achieve in the course of their
practical history, precisely because he is wary of imposing any conceptions
upon individuals that are independent of their own self-activity.
This also explains the nature of his discussion of the distributive principles
of lower and higher phases of a new society in the Critique of the Gotha Pro-
gramme. He is not trying to formulate a normative model of how distribution
ought to function in a new society. Instead, he is addressing what would occur
of necessity if, and only if, a radical transformation occurred in production
and human relations. Marx does not feel the need to advocate specific forms
of distribution in a postcapitalist society, because they will arise, he contends,
from the nature of the new forms of production. He insists, ‘If the elements
of production are so distributed, then the present-day distribution of the
means of consumption results automatically. If the material conditions of
production are the collective property of the workers themselves, then there
55.â•‡ Marx 1989d, p. 87. Some translations give this passage as ‘labour has become
not merely a means to live but is in itself the first necessity of living’. See Marx 1933,
p. 31.
likewise results a distribution of the means of consumption different from the

present one’.56
This does not mean that Marx’s discussion of the lower phase of social-
ism or communism is of incidental or passing importance. For Marx’s discus-
sion of the lower phase points to the specific conditions that are needed to
make the principle ‘From each according to their abilities, to each according to
their needs’ a reality. These conditions centre on the transformation of human
relations through the abolition of indirectly social labour, wage-labour, the
division between mental and manual labour and alienated man/woman rela-
tions. It is only through the transformation of these relations that it becomes
possible to actualise the distributive principle of ‘from each according to their
abilities, to each according to their needs’. Each one of these relations arises
only as a result of conscious, purposeful activity by freely-associated individu-
als. ‘From each according to their ability, to each according their needs’ can-
not come into being through the imposition of some administrative formula.
It is a product of a free society.
The nuances of Marx’s discussion in the Critique of the Gotha Programme can
be brought into focus by noting an important comment made by Herbert Mar-
cuse on Marx’s view of the new society. According to Marcuse, the problem
of capitalism
is to be solved by a revolution which brings the productive process under
the collective control of the ‘immediate producers’. But this is not freedom.
Freedom is living without toil, without anxiety: the play of human faculties.
The realization of freedom is a problem of time: reduction of the working
day to the minimum which turns quantity into quality. A socialist society is
a society in which free time, not labour time is the social measure of wealth
and the dimension of the individual existence.57
Marcuse is certainly correct that for Marx the realisation of freedom centres
on the problem of time. Marx repeatedly emphasises throughout his work
that in a new society, time will become the space for human development.
However, Marcuse also makes the questionable claim that, for Marx, the
problem of time revolves solely around the reduction of the working day
to an absolute minimum. Labour-time is not only a quantitative but also
a qualitative determination. As can be seen from a careful reading of the
Critique of the Gotha Programme, Marx’s view is that labour-time does not
56.â•‡ Marx 1989d, p. 88.

57.â•‡ Marcuse 2000, p. xxiii.
cease to be a measure of social wealth in the lower or initial phase of social-

ism. This does not mean that Marx conceives of this initial phase as one in
which freedom remains unrealised, since the creation of freely-associated,
non-alienated labour shatters the dictatorship of time as an abstract, exter-
nal, immutable entity that directs the will of the producers and consumers.
Freedom defines every phase of the new society for Marx, even when that
phase still operates in accordance with natural necessity, since it consists of
‘free men’ ‘expending their many different forms of labour power in full
self-awareness as one single social labour force’.58 A society is unfree not
because labour-time is a measure, but because socially-necessary labour-time
is the measure. And socially-necessary time ceases to be the measure once
individuals as a social entity freely organise social production and reproduc-
tion temporally and spatially in accordance with their natural and acquired
talents and capabilities.
By failing to conceptually distinguish between actual labour-time and
socially-necessary labour-time, Marcuse is led to conclude that a new society,
for Marx, entails the abolition of labour per se.59 As noted in Chapter One,
Marx does speak of the abolition of labour in his early writings, but by that
he means the abolition of alienated labour. Moreover, the Critique in the Gotha
Programme explicitly states that labour exists not only in the initial phase of
socialism but also in a higher phase insofar as labour becomes ‘life’s prime
want’.60 In a higher phase of socialism, but only in a higher phrase, labour
engaged in material production ceases to be a measure of social relations.
Freedom in the initial phase of socialism or communism remains defective
insofar as it remains tied to the necessity of remunerating individuals based
on actual labour-time. But that is a far cry from suggesting that that has any-
thing to do with value-production.
58.â•‡ Marx 1976e, p. 171.

59.â•‡ Marcuse’s position also seems to be premised upon the view that ‘toil’ necessar-
ily involves ‘anxiety’. This is clearly not Marx’s view. As he writes in the Grundrisse,
‘Adam Smith conceives labour to be a curse. To him, “rest” appears as the adequate
state, as identical with “liberty” and “happiness”â•›.â•›.â•›.â•›for work to become travail attrac-
tif, to be the realization of the individual, in no way implies that work is pure fun,
pure amusement, as in Fourier’s childishly naïve conception. Really free work, e.g.,
the composition of music, is also the most damnably difficult, demanding the most
intensive effort’. See Grundrisse, Marx 1986a, p. 530.
60.â•‡ Marx’s formulation causes considerable problems for Postone’s interpreta-
tion of Marx as well, given his position that the elimination of labour as a socially-
constitutive category is a pre-condition of a new society. He appears to sidestep the
issue by not mentioning the Critique of the Gotha Programme in Time, Labour, and Social
Domination.
‘Socialism’, for Marx, was never meant to serve as a transitional stage to

some distant ‘communist’ formation. He is not pushing off the realm of free-
dom to some far horizon. The realm of freedom emerges simultaneously with the
elimination of capitalism. Marx is realistic enough to understand, however, that
a free society itself undergoes self-development. There would be no necessity
for it to undergo further self-development if it did not contain some kind of
internal defect that impels the forward movement.61
This is not to suggest that Marx did not conceive of a possible transitional
stage between capitalism and the initial phase of socialism. He addresses this
in the Critique of the Gotha Programme thusly: ‘Between capitalist and commu-
nist society lies the period of the revolutionary transformation of the one into
the other. Corresponding to this is also a political transition period in which
the state can be nothing but the revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat.’62
Based on the above discussion of the impact of the Paris Commune, it
appears that Marx conceived of this transitional period along the lines of the
non-statist and freely-associated form of self-governance that emerged in the
Commune. Marx saw in the Commune an exemplar of the political form best-
suited for exiting capitalism. It is a mediatory or transitional political stage in
which capitalist social relations have not yet been fully overcome but which
are in the process of being broken down.
For this reason, it is important to note that in the Critique Marx does not
speak of the ‘dictatorship of the proletariat’ but of the ‘revolutionary dictator-
ship of the proletariat’.63 He may have done so in order to distinguish his
position from that of Lassalle, whom he attacked as ‘a future workingmen’s
dictator’.64 Marx does not advocate a ‘revolutionary dictatorship’ that rules
over the proletariat through a political party; instead, he advocates the rule of
61.â•‡ This would also apply, one can speculate, to that higher phase in which the
totality of human sensuousness is allowed its full and free manifestation. Since intel-
lectual and ‘spiritual’ growth is potentially infinite, there can be no ‘end’ to a society
that allows for a ‘totality of manifestations of life’. Perhaps this is why Marx held that
‘communism as such is not the goal of human development’ and why in the Grundrisse
he speaks of an ‘absolute movement of becoming’. Marx never explicitly addresses
this issue in terms of a higher phase outlined in the Critique of the Gotha Programme.
62.â•‡ Marx 1989d, p. 95. In his discussion of the Critique of the Gotha Programme,
Campbell 1996, p. 207 refers to ‘Marx’s reference to socialism as the period of the
dictatorship of the working class’. However, Marx does not refer the dictatorship of
the proletariat as socialism. He clearly refers to it as lying ‘between capitalist and com-
munist [or socialist] society’. This failure to distinguish the political form of transition
between capitalism and socialism from socialism itself is extremely widespread in the
secondary literature of Marx, but it has no basis in Marx’s actual writings.
63.â•‡ I wish to thank Karel Ludenhoff for bringing this to my attention, in private
correspondence.
64.â•‡ Marx 1985b, p. 467.
the proletariat itself as it works to progressively eliminate capital’s all-consum-

ing social dominance through democratic forms of deliberation and participa-
tion. Important though this stage is, however, it is not equivalent to the lower
phase of socialism or communism. For, with Marx’s lower phase, a decisive
and qualitative break is made with capitalism.
Marx makes this explicit in his ‘Notes on Bakunin’s Statehood and Anar-
chy’, written around the same time as the Critique of the Gotha Programme. It
further reveals how Marx understood ‘revolutionary dictatorship’ – and how
different his understanding of it was from most ‘Marxists’ who followed him.
In response to Bakunin’s question as to whether a working-class ‘dictatorship’
would consist, in the case of Germany, of all of the workers of the country,
Marx replies, ‘Certainly! For the system starts with the self-government of the
communities’.65 Marx identifies proletarian rule not with a party speaking in
its name, but rather with its own ‘communities’ of association. He acknowl-
edges that this can be termed ‘a workers’ state, if he wants to call it that’.66
But what Marx means by this is that ‘The class rule of the workers over the
strata of the old world who are struggling against them can only last as long
as the economic basis of class society has not yet been destroyed’.67 This is not
rule for the masses but by them. The masses make use of a tool or instrument
of the old society, governmental power, insofar as the social transformations
that can lead to the abolition of the state itself are not yet fully achieved; and
yet this government-form, unlike in capitalism, is thoroughly democratic and
inclusive. As the self-determining and participatory communities manage to
abolish indirectly social labour and alienated human relationships, this gov-
ernmental form would be superseded. As he puts it, ‘This just means that
when class rule has disappeared there will be no state in the present politi-
cal sense’.68 Moreover, when the workers’ ‘victory is complete, its rule too is
therefore at an end, since its class character will have disappeared’.69
The notion that the lower phase of socialism or communism represents
a ‘proletarian dictatorship’ in which value-production still prevails, which
largely defined the discourse of established ‘Marxist’ thought in the twentieth
century, is alien to Marx’s thought. Such misreadings of his work had already
begun to emerge in his own lifetime, and he lived long enough to directly
65.â•‡ Marx 1989e, p. 519.

66.â•‡ Marx 1989e, p. 520. Marx’s use of this phrase calls into question Cyril Smith’s
claim that Marx never used the term ‘workers’ state’. See Smith 2005, pp. 143–56.
67.â•‡ Marx 1989e, p. 521.
68.â•‡ Marx 1989e, p. 519.
69.â•‡ Ibid. Marx’s comments of 1875 on the ‘self-abolition’ of proletarian rule is
completely consistent with his earlier comments in The Holy Family and The German
Ideology. See Chapter One, above.
answer them. One of his most poignant critiques is found in his ‘Notes on
Wagner’s Lehrbuch des politischen Ökonomie’, which was one of the first works
by an academic economist to directly engage Marx’s theoretical contribution:
Value. According to Mr. Wagner, Marx’s theory of value is the ‘cornerstone
of his socialist system’. As I have never established a ‘socialist system’, this
is a fantasy of Wagner, Schäffle e tutti quanti.â•›.â•›.â•›. [I]n my investigation of
value I have dealt with bourgeois relations, not with the application of this
theory of value to a ‘social state’ not even constructed by me but by Mr.
Schäffle for me.70
Marx’s entire body of work shows that a new society is conditional upon a
radical transformation of labour and social relations. The measure of whether
such a transformation is adequate to the concept of a new society is the
abolition of the law of value and value-production by freely-associated
individuals.
This goal is not achieved, however, merely by some act of revolutionary
will. It is achieved by discerning and building upon the elements of the new
society that are concealed in the shell of the old one. This includes elucidating
the forces of liberation that arise against capitalist alienation – which includes
not only workers but all those suffering the ills of capitalist society, be they
national minorities, women, or youth – which Marx referred to as the ‘new
forces and passions’ for the ‘reconstruction of society’.71 It is the development
of capitalism ‘as such’ and the myriad forms of resistance that arise against it
– none of which can be anticipated in advance – that create the possibility for
a new society. It is on these grounds that Marx argues, ‘The capitalist mode of
production is in fact a transitional form which by its own organism must lead
to a higher, to a cooperative mode of production, to socialism’.72
70.â•‡ Marx 1989h, pp. 533, 537.

71.â•‡ Marx 1976e, p. 928.
72.â•‡ See Marx 1989f, pp. 783–4: ‘Daß die kapitalistische Producktionsweise eigentlich
nur eine Übergangsform ist, die durch ihren eigenen Organismus zu einer höheren,
zur genossenschaftlichen Productionsweise, zum Sozialismus führen muß’. I am indebted
to Chattopadhyay 2010 for bringing this passage to my attention.
Conclusion
Evaluating Marx’s Concept of a
Postcapitalist Society
This study has shown that a coherent and vital con-

cept of a new society is contained in the works of
Marx, present from his early work of the 1840s to his
last writings. From the inception of his philosophi-
cal project, Marx expressed strong opposition to any
formation or situation in which individuals become
dominated by social relations and products of their
own making. His criticism of the inversion of sub-
ject and predicate, which is evident from his early
writings on the state and civil society, carries over
into his critique of the economic formations of capi-
talism, in which the self-development of individuals
becomes thwarted by the products of their produc-
tive activity. This perspective is hardly restricted to
his early writings. His two-decades-long process of
developing Capital, as well as the content of Capital
itself, shows that the primary object of Marx’s criti-
cism was the domination of things over individu-
als, of dead labour over living labour, of the object
over the subject. It is on these grounds that he not
only opposed capitalist commodity-production but
also the system of value-production upon which it is
based. Marx’s critique of capital is part of a complex
argument directed against all social phenomena that
take on a life of their own and dictate the behaviour
and actions of the social agents that are responsible
for creating them.
Marx’s philosophical approach, both to the cri-
tique of capitalism and to the delineation of its
208 • Conclusion
alternative, is rooted in a particular conception of freedom. Free develop-

ment, for Marx, is not possible if human activity and its products take on
the form of an autonomous power and proscribe the parameters in which
individuals can express their natural and acquired talents and abilities. As I
have sought to show, Marx’s commitment to this concept of freedom owes
much to his effort to re-think the status of human relations in the aftermath of
the philosophical discoveries of German idealism, on the one hand, and the
emergence of industrial capitalism and the formation of a radicalised work-
ing class opposing it, on the other. His conclusion that the modern world is
a fundamentally inverted (and indeed a mad) phenomenon does not derive
from an exaggerated commitment to ‘rationalism’ or speculative metaphys-
ics; instead, it derives from his understanding of freedom as the subject’s abil-
ity to feel at one with and at home in its objective manifestations, instead of
being controlled and dominated by them.
This conception of freedom serves as the basis of Marx’s objections to the
myriad forms of social phenomena associated with modern capitalism –
value, exchange-value, money, commodity-production and circulation, and
not least, capital itself. It also grounds his criticism of the state and civil soci-
ety. For this very reason, Marx does not object to capitalism because of the
mere existence of the market and private property. He objects to the market
and private property insofar as they are expressions of capital – a formation
that crystallises the transformation of human relations into relations between
things.
Marx’s conception of a postcapitalist society is therefore radically differ-
ent from what has characterised most approaches to ‘socialism’ and ‘commu-
nism’ in the century or more since his death. His critique of existing society
goes much deeper than the contrast between the ‘anarchic’ market and the
‘organised’ factory, just as it extends beyond the boundaries of defining social-
ism as the mere abolition of private property and the market. Marx also goes
further than merely condemning the class-relations of capitalist society, since,
as I have shown, his foremost object of critique is alienated human relations –
including those between men and women. In doing so Marx focuses on the
need to eliminate the basis of both modern capitalism and its statist-‘socialist’
alternatives – value-production. Since he objects to value-production in so
far as it crystallises the subjection of individuals to social relations of their
own making, he can hardly conceive of its alternative as another structure
in which human relations take on the form of things. Marx’s conception that
only freely-associated labour can strip the mystical veil from commodity-
production is not a mere humanitarian adjunct to an otherwise objectivis-
tic economic theory. His concept of the alternative to capitalism flows from
Evaluating Marx’s Concept of a Postcapitalist Society • 209
the same normative concerns that govern his critique of capital itself. Just as
he opposes any social formation that acts behind the backs of individuals,
so he opposes any social solution that imposes itself irrespective of the self-
activity of the subject.
Marx’s conception of a postcapitalist society is therefore both expansive
and visionary, in that it excludes any social formation that takes on an autono-
mous power at the expense of its creators. This is why even when he endorsed
workers’ cooperatives as a possible transitional form to socialism, he warned
that they too can become a ‘sham and a snare’1 if they are not under the work-
ers’ actual, and not just formal, control. This is why even when he noted that
the concentration and centralisation of capital points towards the socialised
relations of the future, he argued that they could serve as the basis for a future
society only if they there were accompanied by ‘other large-scale organic rev-
olutions in the mode of production’.2 Marx never endorses a given social form
as the solution, unless it avoids the tendency of human subjective activity to
become constrained by forces of its own making.
At the same time, there is an underlying realism and sobriety in Marx’s
work that runs counter to the claim that his concept of a free society requires
the existence of perfect and error-free individuals. Most of his discussions of
postcapitalism actually deal with a socialist or communist society that is ‘still
stamped with the birthmarks of the old society from whom womb it emerges’.3
This is especially the case with his discussions of the new society in Volumes I
and II of Capital, and in much of the Critique of the Gotha Programme.
Marx understands that it is not possible to achieve complete social equality
in the immediate aftermath of the demise of capitalism. Nor is it possible to
leave behind such cardinal principles of the old society as basing remunera-
tion on an exchange of labour-time for means of consumption – even though
labour-time functions in a radically different form and content in his envis-
aged new society, as compared with the old one. It is indeed fundamentally
different, since social relations become ‘transparent in their simplicity’ once
the labourers put an end to alienated labour and the dictatorship of abstract
time. Marx is not suggesting that all facets of life become transparent in the
lower phase of socialism or communism; indeed, he never suggests this about
conditions in a higher phase either.4 He is addressing something much more
1.â•‡ Marx 1986c, p. 335.

2.â•‡ Marx 1981a, p. 743.
3.â•‡ Marx 1989d, p. 85.
4.â•‡ Despite the claims of some critics of Hegel, it is highly questionable that Hegel
endorsed the idea that a complete transparency is possible between the self and the
210 • Conclusion
specific: namely, the transparent nature of the exchange between labour-time

and products of labour. This relation can never be transparent so long as there
is value-production: it becomes transparent only once indirectly social labour
is replaced by directly social labour.
The fact remains, however, that conditions in the lower phase of socialism
or communism are defective and limited as compared to those that follow in
a higher phase. Indeed, Marx contends that they are ‘still stamped with the
birthmarks of the old society’ in ‘every respect, economically, morally, and
intellectually’.5 This is a far cry from someone who thinks that a socialist soci-
ety entails the perfected human-being.
Marx does not, of course, limit his horizon to the initial phase of socialism
or communism. He discusses it as part of understanding what is needed in
order to bring to realisation the more expansive social relations of a higher
phase of communism. Marx conceives of this phase as the passing-beyond of
natural necessity – not in the sense that labour as such would come to an end,
but rather that society would no longer be governed by the need for material
production and reproduction. This higher phase, however, can only come into
being as a result of a whole series of complex and involved historical devel-
opments, which include the abolition of ‘the enslaving subordination of the
individual to the division of labour, and thereby also the antithesis between
mental and physical labour’.6 It is impossible to achieve this, he reminds us,
in the absence of highly-developed productive forces. Marx never conceived
it as possible for a society to pass to ‘socialism’ or ‘communism’ while remain-
ing imprisoned in conditions of social and technological backwardness.7 And
yet it is not the productive forces that create the new society: it is, instead, live
men and women. ‘For it is not the means of production that create the new type of
man, but the new man that will create the means production, and the new mode of
activity will create the new type of human being, socialist man’.8
Other, let alone Marx – who often criticises Hegel for appearing to veer towards such
a conception. For more on this, see Kain 2005.
5.â•‡ Marx 1989d, p. 84.
6.â•‡ Marx 1989d, p. 87.
7.â•‡ Even when Marx, at the end of his life, entertained the possibility that a country
like Russia could experience a socialist revolution ahead of the West, he held that it
would not succeed unless the revolution was joined and supported by a proletarian
revolution in the industrially-developed countries. He never held that Russia (or any
other country for that matter) could create a socialist society in the absence of such an
international transformation of social and production relations. See Marx 1983c, pp.
97–126. For more on this, see Hudis 2010 and Anderson 2010.
8.â•‡ Dunayevskaya 1992, p. 20. This statement is contained in an essay first written
in 1942, entitled ‘Labor and Society’.
Marx’s realistic humanism is most of all expressed in his insistence that the
new society is contained in the womb of the old one. For Marx, there was
never a question of calling socialism or communism into being through the
projection of a subjective wish. The new society will immanently emerge from
the existing conditions prepared by capitalist production and reproduction
and the social struggles against them. If those conditions and struggles are
not present, he held, it would not emerge at all, regardless of how much such
a state of being may be desired by particular individuals. This is the reason
that Marx devoted so much of his life to a detailed study and analysis of exist-
ing capitalist relations as well as revolutionary struggles and movements and
why he spends so little time devising any kind of blueprint for the future.
That he said relatively little about the future, however, has been wrongly
interpreted to mean that he said nothing about the future. Moreover, it has
been wrongly interpreted to mean that one ought not to say anything about
the future – presumably because normative considerations and ‘oughts’
are out of place for ‘socialists’ and ‘historical materialists’. The self-refuting
nature of the proposition is self-evident but is all-too-rarely reflected upon by
its expositors. Normative considerations are as inescapable as language itself,
precisely because what ought to be is inscribed within what is.9 It is impos-
sible to avoid reflection about the future, nor is it desirable to avoid it – at
least so long as such reflection has some grounding in reality. The inescapable
nature of normative statements about the future is evident from the content
of Marx’s own work. Much as he may have wanted to avoid speaking about
the future, he often found it necessary to do so precisely because the elements of
the future are contained within the very structure of the present that he subjected to
such careful and painstaking critical examination.
Marx definitely understood his role as delineating the ‘law of motion’ of
capitalism towards its collapse, but the very fact that he analysed it with this
aim in mind suggests that he approached his subject matter with a concep-
tion of the necessity for its transcendence. If he did not have a specific kind
of future in mind, why would he have adopted the specific argumentative
approach found in his greatest theoretical work, Capital, which centres upon
tracing out the processes towards dissolution of a given social phenomenon?
9.â•‡ ‘Many attempts have been made to deduce “ought” from “is” or to base it on
some kind of “ought-free” being of facticity. These attempts are not based on the
presupposition that “is” and “ought” are opposed, but instead on the hypothesis that
the meaning of “is” or “being” is more universal or more fundamental than that of
“ought”, and that the latter can somehow emerge out of the formerâ•›.â•›.â•›.â•›In this hypothesis,
“ought” and “is” are simultaneously given – they belong together – but our awareness
of this belonging would require an awakening’ (Peperzak 2004, p. 46).
212 • Conclusion
Marx’s entire vantage-point hinges on not just having, but also being commit-
ted to, a specific vision of the future. Without it the very nature of his political,
economic, and intellectual project could not have developed as it did.
Does this mean that Marx finds himself in something of a bind – want-
ing to avoid ‘utopian’ speculation about the future, on the one hand, while
not being able to avoid analysing the present on the basis of some (however
general) conception of the future, on the other? Can he successfully carry out
the ‘scientific’ and ‘materialist’ nature of his project while remaining wedded
to a conception of how the future should or ought to evolve? It may appear
that there is a tension between these two dimensions of Marx’s project, and it
would take an additional work to demonstrate the many ways in which Marx
sought to navigate his way through this problem. However, it is possible that
a famous analogy from an earlier philosopher may help illuminate how Marx
managed to reconcile and overcome this apparent tension between the imma-
nent and the transcendent. I am referring to Plato’s conception of maieutics –
of the philosopher as the midwife of knowledge.10
References and illusions to the new emerging from within the ‘womb’ of the
old constantly appear in Marx’s work. If there is one persisting and recurrent
theme in Marx’s analysis of capital, it is this: ‘The development of the produc-
tive forces of social labour is capital’s historic mission and justification. For
that very reason, it unwittingly creates the material conditions for a higher
form of production’.11 The new society, for Marx, always emerges from within
the womb of the old one. But what does this say about Marx’s own standpoint
vis-à-vis the object of his investigation? He does not want to project a vision
or concept of the new society from out of his head, irrespective of the social
conditions and relations of reality itself. To do so, after all, would violate the
very concept of freedom, since it would entail imposing a conception upon the
subject from outside. Neither can he avoid speaking about the future in some
way, however, since his conception of the future (in however general a form)
has helped inform his very approach to the object of his investigation. He
therefore adopts the approach of elucidating the elements of the future that he
finds contained within the present, based on the series of values and premises
that he brings to his analysis.
Marx’s writings therefore serve as a kind of midwife of the new society. He
does not give birth to the idea of socialism or communism: he elicits it from
the movement of capitalism itself. In other words, it is not only that Marx
10.â•‡ The concept is central to Plato’s Theaetetus. The image of midwifery (maieutics)
is mentioned 26 times in Plato’s dialogues, 24 of them in the Theaetetus and once in
the Cratylus and Statesman. See Brandwood 1976, p. 544.
11.â•‡ Marx 1981a, p. 368.
holds that the new society will emerge from within the womb of the old one. It
is that for this very reason he sees his role as being no more than the midwife
who assists its delivery. By elucidating capitalism’s tendency towards dissolu-
tion and collapse to the rising labour-movement, he is able to explain the main
elements of that new society without falling prey to utopianism.
Given the tragic outcome of what has passed for ‘Marxism’ in the past cen-
tury, how valid is such a methodological approach and perspective? In many
respects, it remains extremely valuable, precisely because Marx’s maieutic
approach avoids the voluntarism and élitism that have marred far too many
experiments at social transformation. The tragedy of ‘Marxism’ is that a phi-
losophy that originated (at least in Marx’s hands) with the aim of abolishing
any social powers that operate behind the backs of the producers ended up
creating dictatorial régimes that imposed their will on individuals without
even a minimal degree of democratic control or public accountability. Nor
was this only a political problem: the economic plans of the state-controlled
economies operated no less outside the control of the producers, who were
reduced to wage-slavery (where they were not subjected to forced labour of a
more nefarious kind).12 The notion that a ‘new’ society can be imposed behind
the backs of the populace and irrespective of specific social conditions faced
by that society has done enormous damageÂ�– not least in leading large num-
bers of people around the world to question whether a viable alternative to
capitalism is even possible. Indeed, it can be argued that the greatest barrier in
the way of a revolutionary challenge to capitalism today is not the material or
ideological power of capital but rather the memory of the innumerable flawed
and failed efforts to overcome it in the not-so-distant past. The past does hang
like a dead weight upon the living – especially when alternative visions of a
postcapitalist society that can animate the imagination of humanity are hard
to come by.
It is not idle speculation to presume that Marx would be the first to criti-
cise the flawed attempts at ‘emancipation’ made in his name, since, as I have
shown, he did criticise many of them in his disputes with a number of social-
ist and communist tendencies of his era. At the same time, precisely because
we live in the shadow of the crimes committed in Marx’s name, it does not
seem possible to fully renew the Marxian project of issuing a full-throttled
challenge to capital if the conception of a new society found in his writings
12.â•‡ It has been widely estimated that between 12 and 15 million citizens of the
Soviet Union laboured in the forced labour-camps at any given time during and after
the forced-industrialisation campaign under Stalin. This is not to count the millions
of others, especially Ukrainians, Uzbeks, Crimean Tartars and others, who perished
at his hands.
214 • Conclusion
remains only implicit. This is not only because of the way in which the limi-
tations and ultimate collapse of the state-capitalist régimes that called them-
selves ‘socialist’ or ‘communist’ helped give global capitalism a new lease on
life. It is also because of a slew of social and ecological dangers facing us in the
twenty-first century. Given the fact that time may well be running out on the
effort to save the planet from capital’s rapacious self-expansionary nature, as
seen in the ecological crisis, it has become necessary to project a much more
explicit notion of what constitutes a viable notion of the alternative to capital-
ism than Marx himself envisaged. After all, Marx did not live to witness the
enormous destructive potential contained in the productive power of capital
that is so evident today. Of necessity, he emphasised the need to develop the
productive forces – whereas we are witnessing the need to limit the destruc-
tive power of much of these forces as much as and as soon as possible, even
as the need to overcome the crushing poverty and economic under-develop-
ment that afflicts much of the developing world remains one of the foremost
problems facing us today.
Yet these very realities make Marx’s critique of capital, and his conception
of the alternative to it, more relevant than ever before. Precisely because every
facet of life is today threatened by the all-dominating power of capital that
Marx warned so eloquently against a century and a half ago, his conception of
how to surmount the capital relation, which is itself inseparable from value-
production, must be developed and projected today in a far more explicit and
comprehensive manner than appeared necessary in the nineteenth century.
While the future may well be contained in the womb of the old, the events
of the past hundred years make it painfully evident that there is nothing auto-
matic or ensured about the emergence of the new. Although our age may still
be defined as one of a ‘birth-time of history’,13 we have also experienced all
too many still-births – in large part because so many have misconstrued the
nature of what constitutes a genuinely free, non-capitalist society. ‘Marxism’
has especially suffered from the tendency of many of its adherents to separate
the ‘factual’ from the ‘normative’, the real from the ideal, the economic from
the philosophical. We must put all this behind us. The history of the past
hundred years makes it painfully evident that while the material conditions
for the existence of socialism are a necessary condition for freedom, they are
by no means sufficient. They can even lead to a new form of tyranny based
on the despotic plan of capital, if the effort to elicit the emancipatory forms
contained within the womb of the old is based on political shortsightedness
13.â•‡ See Hegel 1978, p. 6: ‘Besides, it is not difficult to see that ours is a birth-time
and a period of transition to a new era’.
and philosophical miscomprehension. Precisely because we cannot do with-

out the labour of thinking out and working out in everyday life an alternative
to capitalism, we cannot do without rediscovering the invaluable insights that
Marx left us as to how to surmount the capital-relation.
This is most of all needed because the lack of a viable alternative to both
‘free-market’ capitalism and what has called itself ‘socialism’ has acted as
a serious impediment to social transformation over the past three decades.
The barriers to generating mass opposition to capitalism surely cannot be
explained by it having become a ‘kindler and gentler’ system over the past
several decades: on the contrary, its drive for profit at the expense of human
needs has only become more accentuated. So why have so many movements
stopped short of challenging capital itself, in favour of instead emphasising
relatively restricted social reforms and self-limiting revolutions? I would
argue that given the absence of a viable alternative to capitalism, discontent
with the many ills of existing society risks falling short of a serious challenge
to the system as a whole. In this sense, a philosophically grounded alterna-
tive to capitalism is not only needed to further develop mass-opposition; it is
needed to actually inspire it.14
This work has tried to show that a much deeper, richer, and more emanci-
patory conception of a postcapitalist society is found in Marx’s work than has
hitherto been appreciated. This is not to say that Marx provides anything in
the way of a detailed answer as to what is a viable alternative to capitalism.
His work does, however, contain crucial conceptual markers and suggestions
that can help a new generation chart its way towards the future. Rather than
wait upon ‘a sunburst, which, in one flash, illuminates the features of the new
world’,15 the realities of our time, in terms of its triumphs as well as its trag-
edies, calls on us to develop a much more explicit and articulated alternative
to capitalism than appeared necessary in Marx’s time, and even to Marx him-
self. We do the most justice to a thinker like Marx, not by repeating what he
said and did, but by rethinking the meaning of his legacy for the realities of our
times. It is to this end that this study is devoted.
14.â•‡ For more on this, see Hudis 2005a.

15.â•‡ Hegel 1978, p. 7.
Appendix
Translation of Marx’s Excerpt-Notes on the
Chapter ‘Absolute Knowledge’ in Hegel’s
Phenomenology of Spirit
Note: Marx’s notes on the chapter ‘Absolute Knowl-

edge’ from Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit have
never before appeared in English translation. They
were composed at the time Marx wrote the Economic
and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844, most likely as
part of his work on the concluding part of the Third
Manuscript, now known as ‘Critique of the Hegelian
Dialectic and Philosophy as a Whole’. The original
can be found in Karl Marx-Friedrich Engels Gesamtaus-
gabe [MEGA2] IV/2 (Berlin: Dietz Verlag), 483–500.
Page numbers in the text (in brackets) are to the
edition of the Phenomenology used by Marx (G.W.F.
Hegel, Phänomenologie des Geistes, ed. Johann Schulze
[Berlin, 1841]), as supplied by the editors of MEGA2.
Marx’s notes consist mostly of copying out pas-
sages and paraphrasing parts of this final chapter of
Hegel’s Phenomenology. Places where Marx inserts
his own comments are indicated by boldface. All
emphases and ellipses are by Marx. The manuscript
breaks off about two-thirds of the way into the chap-
ter on ‘Absolute Knowledge’. In translating these
notes, I have consulted the translations of Hegel’s
Phenomenology by A.V. Miller and J.B. Baillie with-
out, however, necessarily committing myself to their
respective renderings of Hegel’s text.
Translation of Marx’s Excerpt-Notes on ‘Absolute Knowledge’â•‡ •â•‡ 217
In the Phenomenology, Absolute Knowledge thus becomes

described as:
1)â•‡In revealed religion the actual self-consciousness of Spirit is not yet the
object of its consciousness; it and its moments fall within picture-thinking
and in the form of objectivity. The content of this picture-thinking is abso-
lute spirit; it is still a matter of transcending this mere form. [p. 574.]
2)â•‡This surmounting of the object of consciousnessâ•›.â•›.â•›.â•›is not to be taken in a one-
sided manner, that the object showed itself returning into the self; rather,
it is to be taken specificallyâ•›.â•›.â•›.â•›to not only mean that the object showed itself
as returning into the self, but above all that the object presents itself not
only as a vanishing factor but as the externalisation of self-consciousness
that posits thinghood. This externalisation has not merely a negative but
a positive meaning, not merely for us or in itself but for self-consciousness
itself. The negative of the object, or its self-transcendence, has a positive
meaning, for on the one side it knows this nothingness of the object that it
itself externalises; – for in this externalisation it posits itself as the object
or the object as the inseparable unity of being-for-self. On the other hand,
there is also this other moment, that self-consciousness has equally tran-
scended this externalisation and objectification as it has returned to itself,
so that it is with itself in its otherness as such.
3)â•‡This is the movement of consciousness and herein is found the totality of
its moments. – It must have taken up a relation to the object in the total-
ity of its determinations and from the point of view of each of them. This
totality of its determinations means the object is in itself a spiritual being
and it is so because in truth consciousness apprehends each individual
one of them as its own self, through the spiritual relationship just mentioned.
[pp. 574–5.]
4)â•‡The object is thus the partly immediate being or the thing in general – cor-
responding to its immediate consciousness. It is partly a becoming other
of itself, its relationship or essential being is for another and for itself; its deter-
minateness – corresponds to perception, partly to essential being in the
form of a universal corresponding to the understanding. (Being, Essence,
Concept; Universality. Particularity. Individuality. Position. Negation.
Negation of the Negation; simple, differentiated, transcended oppo-
sition. Immediacy. Mediation. Self-transcending mediation. Being in
itself. Externalisation. Return to itself from externalisation. In-itself.
For-itself. In-and-for-itself. Unity. Differentiation. Self-differentiation.
Identity. Negation. Negativity. Logic. Nature. Spirit. Pure Consciousness.
Consciousness. Self-Consciousness. Concept. Judgement. Syllogism.) It
218â•‡ •â•‡ Appendix
is then a whole, a syllogism, or the movement of universality through

particularisation to individuality, as also the reverse movement, from the
individual through its transcendence or determination to the universal.
– These are the three determinations by which consciousness must know
the object as itself. This knowing of which we here speak is not that of the
pure comprehension of the object; instead, this knowing is to be taken only
as aspects or moments of its coming to be in the manner appropriate to
consciousness as such, as moments of pure knowledge, the concept itself,
in the form of shapes of consciousness. For this reason the object does not
yet appear in consciousness as the spiritual essence that we have spoken
of; the relationship of consciousness to it is not the view of this totality
as such nor in its pure form as the concept. Instead, it is from one side a
shape of consciousness in general, and from the other side a number of
moments that we bring together, in which the totality of the moments of
the object and the relations of consciousness to the object can be indicated
only as resolving itself into its moments. [pp. 575–6.]
5)â•‡In regard to the object in so far as it is an immediacy, a being of indiffer-
ence, we saw Observing Reason seeking and finding itself in this indifferent
thing – that is, as equally conscious of its action being external to it, and
as the object that is only known immediatelyâ•›.â•›.â•›.â•›its specific determination
is expressed in the infinite judgment that the being of the I is a thing. And
moreover, the I is a being of sensuous immediacy; when the I is called a
soul it is in fact represented as a thing, but as something invisible, intan-
gible; in fact not as an immediate being, what one means by a thing.
That non-spiritual judgment [2] is the concept of its spirituality. Now to
see how this inner sense becomes pronounced. The thing is I, that is,
the thing transcended; in itself it is nothing. It has meaning only in the
relation, through the I and its connections with it. – This moment comes
forth for consciousness in pure insight and enlightenment. Things are
simply considered to be useful and are considered only in terms of their
utility.â•›.â•›.â•›.â•›The cultivated self-consciousness, which has traversed the world
of self-alienated spirit, has through its externalisation produced the thing
as its own self; it therefore retains it in itself, and knows that the thing
has no independence, that the thing is essentially only being for an other;
or, to provide complete expression to the relationship, to what here con-
stitutes the nature of the object, the thing exists as being-for-self; it declares
sense-certainty to be absolute truth; however, this being for self is itself
declared a vanishing moment which passes into its opposite, into a being
that is at the mercy of another. – But the knowledge of the thing is still
not complete; it must become known not only in terms of the immediacy
of its being and determinateness, but rather also as essence or inner being,
as self. This is present in moral self-consciousness. It knows its knowing to
be what is absolutely essential or that being is pure will and pure knowl-
edge; it is nothing else except this willing or knowing. Any other has only
unessential being, that is, not being in and for itself, only its empty husk.
In so far as the moral consciousness lets determinate being go forth freely
from the self, so too it takes its conception of the world back into itself
once again. Finally, as conscience it is no longer this ceaseless alteration
of determinate being placed and displaced in the self; instead, it knows
that its determinate being as such is this pure certainty of its own self; the
objective element in which it puts itself is thus nothing other than pure
knowledge of itself by itself. [pp. 576–7.]
6)â•‡These are the moments of which the reconciliation of spirit with its own
particular consciousness is composed. By themselves they are single and
solitary, and their spiritual unity alone provides the power of this recon-
ciliation. The last of these moments is this unity itself and binds them all
together into itself. Spirit, which in its determinate being is certain of itself,
has for the element of its existence nothing else but this very knowledge of
itself. The declaration that what it does is in accordance with the conviction
of duty, it is the valuing (Money) of its action. – Action is the first inherent
division of the simple unity of the notion and the return from out of this
division. This first movement turns over into the second, in that this ele-
ment of recognition posits itself as simple knowledge of duty as against the
distinction and diremption that lie in action as such; in this way it constitutes
a stubborn actuality confronting action. In forgiveness we saw how this
hardness surrenders and divests itself. Actuality, therefore, as immediate
determinate being, has no other significance for self-consciousness than that
of being a pure knowing; – likewise, as determinate being or as relation,
what is self-opposed is a knowing partly of this purely individual self
and partly of knowledge as a universal. Herein it is equally posited that
the third moment, the universality or essence, is valued only as knowledge
for each of the two sides that stand in opposition to one another. Finally,
they put an end to the empty opposition that still remains and are the
knowledge of I = I – this individual self that is immediately a pure know-
ing or a universal. [pp. 577–8.]
[3] How reconciliation of consciousness with self-consciousness comes
about is stated in two ways: 1) In religious spirit, 2) in the consciousness
of itself as such. 1) Reconciliation in the form of being-in-itself; 2) in the
form of being-for-itself. In our consideration of them they fall apart. The
unity of the two sides is not exhibited: 1) Spirit in itself, absolute content;
220â•‡ •â•‡ Appendix
2) for itself, contentless form or as the aspect of self-consciousness; 3) Spirit

in and for itself. [pp. 578–9.]
7)â•‡This unification in religion, as present in the return of picture thinking
into self-consciousness, but not however according to the intrinsic form,
since the religious aspect is the aspect of the in-itself, which the movement
of self-consciousness stands against. The unification belongs to this other
aspect, which in contrast is the aspect of reflection into self; it contains
itself and its opposite, not only implicitly but explicitly or in a devel-
oped and differentiated way. The content, as well as the other aspect of
spirit, as other, have been brought forth and is here in its completeness;
the unity, which is still lacking, is the simple unity of the concept. – It is
as the particular shape of consciousness, the beautiful soul, the shape of
self-certain spirit, in which the concept stands forth. Its realisation firmly
opposed, it is the one-sided shape that vanishes into thin air but also
positively externalises itself and moves forward. Through this realisation,
the determinateness of the concept is raised up against its fulfilment; its self-
consciousness attains the form of universality. The genuine concept is the
knowing of pure knowledge as its being, as essential being that this pure
self-consciousness, is equally a genuine object, for it is self-existent being
itself. [pp. 579–80.]
The fulfilment of the concept is partly in the acts performed by Spirit,
partly in religion.â•›.â•›.â•›. In the prior shape the form is that of the self itself, in
that it contains the self-certain spirit that acts; the self realises the life of abso-
lute spirit. This shape is just that of the simple concept, which relinquishes
its eternal essence, it is there or it acts. The diremption or coming forth out
of its inwardness, lies in the purity of the concept, for this is the absolute
abstraction of negativity. Similarly, it has the element of its being or reality
in itself, for this is simple immediacy, which is being and existence as well as
essence; the former the negative, the latter positive thought itself. Hegel
keeps developing the tedious process of the beautiful soul, whose result
is the pure universality of knowledge, which is self-consciousness. – The
concept connects the content to itself; and the concept is the knowledge of
the self’s act within itself as all that is essential and all existence, the knowl-
edge of this subject as substance and of substance as this knowledge of its
own act. [pp. 580–82.]
8)â•‡Spirit knows itself in the shape of spirit, comprehended knowing. Truth not
only is itself identical with certainty, but it also has the shape of certainty of
its own self or its determinate being, that is, in the form of comprehended
spirit that knows itself. Truth is the content, which in religion is still not
identical with its certainty. This equality however is obtained, since the
concept has secured the shape of the self. In this way that which is the
very essence has become the element of existence, or has become the form
of objectivity for consciousness – that is, the concept. Spirit, appearing in this
element in consciousness, or produced by consciousness, is science. It is the
pure being-for-self of consciousness; it is I, that is this and no other I and
is no less so an immediately mediated or transcended universal I. It has a
content that it differentiates from itself; for it is pure negativity or diremp-
tion; it is consciousness. This content in its differentiation is the I itself, for
it is the movement of transcending itself or the pure negativity that the I
is. In it the I as differentiated, is reflected into itself; the content is grasped
only when the I in its otherness is at one with itself. [pp. 582–3.]
[4] This content, stated more specifically, is nothing other than the move-
ment just spoken of; for the content is the spirit that traverses its own self and
does so for itself as spirit, by the fact that it possesses the shape of the con-
cept in its objectivity. As regards the existence of this concept, science does
not appear in time or reality until spirit has attained this consciousness of
itself. As spirit that knows what it is, it exists not before and nowhere at
all until after spirit has completed its work of overcoming its incomplete
shape so as to secure for consciousness the shape of its essence – and in
this way to equate its self-consciousness with its consciousness. See the con-
tinuation, p. 583 ff. Being that is hidden to itself is apparently only the
certainty of itself. The relationship of time to history. Comprehended
spirit the annulling of time. Experience, Knowledge, transformation of sub-
stance into subject, the object of consciousness into the object of self-
consciousness, that is, in as much as the transcended object or concept.
It is only as this reflection of itself into itself that it is the truth of spirit.
In so far as spirit is of necessity this self-differentiation, its intuited whole
appears over against this simple self-consciousness; and since the whole is
differentiated, it is differentiated into its intuited pure concept – into time
and the content of the in-itself. Substance as subject involves the at-first
inner necessity to represent in itself what it inherently is as spirit. The com-
pleted objective presentation is equally the reflection of substance or its devel-
opment into the self. Consequently, unless spirit completes itself in itself, has
not done so as world spirit, it cannot reach its completion as self-conscious
spirit. Therefore, the content of religion expresses earlier in time than sci-
ence what spirit is; but science alone is the true knowledge of itself. The
movement, the form of its knowing as such [pp. 583–5.]
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Index
Absolute, 4 n. 6, 33–4, 120, 122, 132 Art, 74, 128

n. 127, 151 Arthur, C.J., 9, 21–5, 31, 67 n. 145
Idea, 10, 15, 31, 33, 48, 66, 69 Artisans, 56 n. 98, 168
Knowledge, 32 n. 110, 65–6, 71, 89, 90 ‘Asiatic’ Mode of Production, 106 n. 75,
n. 230, 216–21 119, 123
negativity, 65, 73, 220 Ataraxia, 40
Spirit, 35, 53, 217–21 Athens, 41
subject, 15, 19, 76, 122 Atomism, 40
see also Dialectical method; dialectics; Automation, 124, 127, 129
Hegel, G.W.F. Autonomy, 44
Absolute movement of becoming, 74, Autonomist Marxism, 25–6, 32
120–1, 204 n. 61 see also Marxism, subjectivist
Abstract labour, 12, 14–17, 23 n. 74, 27–8, Avineri, Shlomo, 47 n. 55
59–60, 64, 88, 97–8, 104, 135, 138–9, 142,
149–52, 154, 163, 191–4 Backhaus, Hans-Georg, 9, 15–16, 35, 43
see also Dual character of labour n. 31
Abstractions, 22–3, 50, 64, 69–70, 77–8, 88, Baillie, J.B., 216
103, 109, 111, 113, 121, 159, 170, 176 Bakunin, Mikhail, 186 n. 19, 205
Adorno, Theodor, 15, 19, 26 Banks, 100–2, 104, 177
Albritton, Robert, 9–14, 24 n. 80 Baran, Paul, 140 n. 156
Alienation, 66–7, 69–71, 73, 73 n. 167, 82, Bastiat, Frédéric, 101 n. 27
109, 111, 118, 126, 138, 145, 171, 205–6, Bauer, Bruno, 43, 62, 76
208, 218 Bebel, August, 188
see also Alienated labour; Transcen- Being, 22, 153, 217–20
dence of alienation Bell, John, 9
Alienated labour, 11, 14, 16, 38, 58–64, Bellofiore, Riccardo, 93 n. 1
68–9, 75, 83, 85, 92, 97, 119, 135–6, 142, Berki, R.N., 182 n. 121, 198 n. 45
152, 163–5, 192, 203, 209 Bernstein, Eduard, 179 n. 113
Althusser, Louis, 9 n. 19 Bidet, Jacques, 93 n. 1
Anarchism, 205 Bismarck, Otto von, 188
Anarchy of the market, 14, 17, 139, 165–6, Boisguillebert, Pierre Le Pesant, 120
173, 208 n. 87
see also Capital, despotic plan of Bourgeois society, 40, 82–3, 85, 94, 105,
Ancient Greece, 16 n. 52, 38–42, 116 117, 124, 138, 140, 155, 179 n. 111, 184,
Ancient Rome, 116 186, 204
Anderson, Kevin, 116, 210 n. 7 see also Capitalism; Civil society
Antiquity, 119 Bourgeoisie, 73, 80, 82–3, 155
Appearance, 20, 22, 24, 65, 81 n. 195, 95 Bracke, Wilhelm, 189
n. 6, 118, 130, 137–8, 142, 148–51, 154, Bray, John, 96, 99–100
178, 191, 221 Brazil, 2
Aristotle, 16 n. 52, 43 n. 32, 121 n. 91, 133 Brissot, Jacques Pierre, 135
n. 128, 149, 150 n. 13, 191 Bureaucracy, Marx’s critique of, 44, 52
232 • Index
Cabet, Etienne, 60 n. 118 Circulation, 14, 20–1, 102–4, 122 n. 93,

Capital, 4–8, 12, 15, 18–20, 24–5, 28–30, 161, 163, 166, 169–70, 174, 208
32, 60, 101 n. 28, 113, 118–19, 121 n. 89, of capital, 5 n. 7, 169–71
122, 124–30, 132, 136, 140, 143–5, 161–7, of commodities, 6, 23, 180, 208
169, 174–7, 179–80, 196, 197 n. 43, 205, Civil society, 38, 47–52, 55, 66, 76–7, 85,
208–9, 213–15 185, 207–8
abolition of, 30, 60, 63, 65, 70, 164, 175, Class-consciousness, 81
186 Class-struggle, 9, 17, 24 n. 80, 28, 34, 55,
accumulation of, 167, 170–3 81–2, 84, 98, 129, 188
as inseparable from wage-labour, 164 Classes, 33, 77, 81, 83–4, 87, 89 n. 227, 102,
as self-expanding value, 1, 12–13, 64, 104–5, 143–5, 170–1, 184–7, 205, 208
113, 121, 122 n. 93, 214 Cohen, G.A., 47 n. 55
as subject, 9–10, 15, 17, 19–21, 29–32, Commodities, 7, 11–12, 13 n. 36, 20, 23,
136 98, 102, 104–5, 107–8, 118 n. 77, 127,
circulation of, 169–70 135–6, 140–2, 144, 150, 153–5, 157–8, 159
concentration and centralisation of, 29, n. 46, 160, 162–3, 170, 172 n. 94, 194, 197
166–7, 176, 179 n. 113, 209 n. 43, 198, 200, 207
constant, 28, 130, 171–2, 174 Commodity-exchange, 17, 22–3, 27, 56–8,
despotic plan of, 161, 165, 179, 185–6, 62, 86, 92, 95, 99, 102–11, 114–15, 119,
196, 214 132, 142, 144, 148–52, 154–5, 164, 169,
general formula of, 19–20 180, 189–90, 192, 194, 197–8
limits of, 9, 13, 132 Commodity-form, 6, 7 n. 12, 22, 96–7,
logic of, 2, 10–15, 17, 22–5, 29, 31–3, 65, 127, 133, 144, 153–5, 160 n. 50
125, 140 Communal relations, 49, 52, 60, 72,
organic composition of, 28, 29 n. 97, 33, 110–12, 114, 119–20, 143, 185
132 n. 127 see also Property, communal
speculative, 169, 176, 178 Communism, 3, 33 n. 115, 46, 53 n. 81, 55
variable, 172, 174–5 n. 96, 70, 72–3, 75, 78–80, 82, 114, 122
Campbell, David, 198 n. 45, 204 n. 62 n. 95, 135 n. 135, 139, 167, 190–4, 196,
Capitalism, 30, 37, 45–7, 53, 55, 68, 74, 81, 199–205, 208, 212
88–90, 97, 100, 103–4, 109–21, 126–7, vulgar, 70, 72–3, 75
129–30, 138, 144, 147–8, 153, 157–8, higher phase of, 190, 199 n. 46, 200–1,
160–3, 166–7, 172–8, 181–2, 187–90, 203, 206, 209–10, 212
192–5, 199, 201, 204, 206–7, 211–13, 215 lower phase of, 193–6, 199 n. 48, 200–3,
historical development of, 13 205, 209–10
defining feature of, 6–7, 10–13, 14 see also abolition of value production;
n. 43, 16–17, 29, 69, 96, 98, 138, 152, absolute movement of becoming;
164, 170–2 free individuality; negation of the
law of motion of, 32, 170, 211 negation; new society; postcapitalist
Capitalists, 15, 24, 61, 63–4, 82, 96, 98, 102, society; value-production,
117–18, 143, 164–6, 170, 173, 176, 179–80 transcendence of
Carey, Henry Charles, 101, 139 Communist League, 56 n. 98
Carthage, 119 n. 82 Communists, 46, 55 n. 96, 56, 56 n. 98, 60,
Categorical Imperative, 51, 54 62, 72–3, 75, 82–4, 135
Catholicism, 103, 159 Competition, 12, 97, 112 n. 59, 165–7, 176
Charavay, Gabriel, 60 n. 118 Comte, August, 147
Chateaubriand, Francois-René, 47 n. 53 Concept, logic of the, 9, 21, 33, 217, 220–1
Chattopadhyay, Paresh, 190 n. 31, 200 Concrete labour, 12, 14, 16, 28, 59, 98, 104,
n. 53 135, 191–2
Chavez, Hugo, 110 n. 54 see also Dual character of labour
Children, 194, 197 Consciousness, 34, 67, 69, 72, 73 n. 167,
China, 107, 107 n. 74, 107 n. 75, 116, 162 80–1, 85, 107, 129, 133, 154, 160, 217–21
n. 57, 173 n. 98, 195 Considérant, Victor Prosper, 46
Christianity, 42, 66 Constituent power, 29
Index • 233
Consumption, 14, 90, 103, 111, 140, 157, Dunayevskaya, Raya, 5 n. 6, 32–4, 69, 89
170–3, 194, 196, 201–3, 209 n. 227, 90 n. 230, 129 n. 118, 140 n. 156,
Contingency, 15–16, 32–3, 58, 86, 88, 91, 155, 160 n. 50, 166 n. 76, 188 n. 23, 210
139, 170, 189, 196 n. 8
Contradiction, 12, 18, 35, 80, 91, 104, 118, Dupré, Louis, 47 n. 55
124, 126, 128, 130–1, 136–9, 144–5, 161, Dussel, Enrique, 93 n. 1, 134 n. 134
178, 220
Cooperatives, 8 n. 17, 179–81, 186–7, 205, Ecology, 1, 14, 91, 122, 214
209 Eastern Europe, 1, 14, 195
Credit, 84 n. 209, 169, 176–7, 179 Economic austerity, 1, 112, 132
Crimean Tatars, 213 n. 12 Education, 194, 197
Crises, 1, 105 Edmunds, T.R., 96
Marx’s theory of, 28, 32, 134, 140, 169, Effective demand, 171–3
171–2, 176 Eisenachers, 188–9
Culture, 70, 113 Empiricism, 4, 67 n. 143, 85–6, 123, 127
Engels, Friedrich, 5 n. 7, 8, 22–3, 75
Darimon, Louis Alfred, 101–7, 114 n. 175, 169, 195
Dehumanisation of the Idea, 34, 66, 71, Engels, Friedrich (works)
90 The Communist Manifesto (1847), 75,
Democracy, 5, 53, 70, 183–5, 193, 205 82–4, 184–5
Democritus, 39–40 The German Ideology, (1846) 75–82, 87–8,
Desires, 21, 78–9, 82, 114, 121 n. 92, 114, 93–4, 167, 205 n. 69
200 Herr Dühring’s Revolution in Science, 8
see also Passion n. 17, 195
Determinism, 39 The Holy Family (1845), 76–7, 86, 93, 206
Detroit, 97 n. 69
Dézamy, Théodore, 60 n. 118 England, 96–7, 99, 101–2, 106, 114, 143
Dialectic of capital. See Capital, logic of Enjoyment, 82, 113, 120, 126, 144, 176
Dialectical method, 4–5, 5 n. 7, 14, 32, 34, Enlightenment, 142, 154, 218
65–6, 71, 117 Epicurus, 39–41
Dialectics, 4–6, 5 n. 5, 7 n. 123, 26, 35, Essence, 13, 16, 28, 42, 44, 49, 67, 69, 71–2,
64–8, 70–3, 89, 131, 138, 216 83, 85, 107, 137–8, 149–51, 154, 217–21
historical, 11, 21–2, 35 Estates, 44, 46, 55
systematic, 9, 21–5, 27, 31, 35 Europe, 1, 9, 14, 47 n. 53, 116 n. 35, 112
see also Hegel; Absolute; dialectical n. 59, 116 n. 75, 131, 132 n. 126, 156, 162
method n. 57, 187–8, 195
Dictatorship of the proletariat. Exchange. See commodity-exchange
See Revolutionary dictatorship of the Exchange of activities, 74, 110–11, 114,
proletariat 120
Dissolution, 40, 55, 115, 122–4, 127, 211 see also postcapitalist society;
of capitalism, 26, 80, 211–13 value-production, transcendence of
of precapitalist formations, 115, 122, Exchange-value, 6, 23, 95, 105, 108,
124, 167 110–13, 115, 119, 121 n. 89, 122, 124, 128,
Distribution, 16, 21, 102–7, 111, 158–9 166, 135, 138, 144–5, 148–52, 154, 156, 167,
183, 187–90, 199 n. 48, 200–1 180, 191, 198, 208
see also circulation Externalisation, 66, 68, 71, 73 n. 166, 214,
Distribution of the elements of produc- 216–18
tion, 94, 110, 112–13, 160, 170, 174–5, see also Alienation
189, 192, 201
Draper, Hal, 59 Family, 48, 66, 71
Dual character of labour, 12, 16, 23–4, 59, Fetishism of commodities, 8, 134, 141–3,
135, 141 n. 158, 150, 152 152–55, 158, 160–1, 163
see also abstract labour; concrete Feudalism, 52, 55 n. 96, 116 n. 75, 123,
labour; value-production 156
234 • Index
Feuerbach, Ludwig, 42–43, 42 n. 28, 66, 72–73, 74 n. 167, 76, 85–6, 89–90, 94,
66 n. 141, 69–70, 73, 84, 86 103, 107, 122 n. 93, 133, 138 n. 149, 151,
Fichte, Johann Gottlieb, 38 168, 209, 215–21
Fineschi, Roberto, 93 n. 1 Marx’s critique of, 33–4, 47–54, 64–73,
First International, 132, 183, 187 88–89, 216–21
Fordism, 30 Marx’s debt to, 5 n. 7, 34, 59, 216–21
Foreign trade, 170 Hegel, G.W.F. (works)
Formalism, 38, 138 Encyclopedia of the Philosophical Sciences,
Forms of value, 8, 23, 134, 150, 152, 160 65–6, 68 n. 147, 69–70
n. 50 First Philosophy of Spirit, 16 n. 50, 68 n. 147
see also Exchange-value Phenomenology of Spirit, 32 n. 110,
Foucault, Michel, 6 65–72, 78, 88–90, 138 n. 149, 216–21
Fourier, Charles, 3 n. 4, 46, 60 n. 118, 72, Philosophy of Right, 47–54, 66, 69–70,
76, 132, 135 n. 135, 179, 203 n. 59 76, 78
Fowkes, Ben, 156 n. 36 Philosophy of Spirit, 68 n. 147
France, 20 n. 61, 46, 47 n. 53, 55 n. 96, 94 Science of Logic, 22–3, 31–4, 38 n. 5,
n. 5, 101, 106, 147 n. 1, 183–7 64–5, 69, 73 n. 166, 153
see also Revolution, French (1789); Paris Hegelianism, 10, 22, 38, 41
Commune (1871) see also Young Hegelians
Frankfurt school, 9, 15, 19, 26 Henry, Michel, 59
Free association, 5, 78, 133, 156–7, 159, Heteronomy, 44
168, 175, 183–7, 202, 206 Heuristic, 6
see also Labour, freely associated Hilferding, Rudolph, 173, 177 n. 108
Freedom, 5, 40–2, 45, 53, 65, 71, 75, 87, Hinrich, Michael, 93 n. 1
113–15, 117–18, 127–8, 145, 156, 160, History, 1–3, 13, 15, 17, 22, 33, 43, 47
180–1, 199–204, 208, 212, 214 n. 53, 51 n. 69, 53 n. 81, 56 n. 98, 67–8,
of the press, 44–6, 51 71, 73 n. 166, 75–6, 78–9, 84–5, 86 n. 217,
of the will, 44 87, 89, 102, 113–17, 119, 122 n. 95, 123,
Friedrich Wilhelm III, 43–4 133, 134 n. 133, 138, 140, 160, 188, 200
n. 53, 201, 210, 214, 221
Gender, 2, 48, 72, 186 n. 18, 194, 202, 206, Hobbes, Thomas, 45, 48
208, 210 Hodgskin, Thomas, 96, 135, 139, 143
see also Women; Women’s liberation Hollander, Samuel, 94, 198 n. 45
General Union of German Workers Holloway, John, 10, 26–7
(ADAV), 187–8 Hook, Sidney, 50 n. 69
Geology, 145 Horkheimer, Max, 15
German Social-Democratic Party (SPD), Hudis, Peter, 27 n. 88, 106 n. 75, 141
188 n. 158, 210 n. 7, 215 n. 14
Germany, 3, 43, 55 n. 96, 179 n. 113, Human emancipation, 52, 62, 200–1
187–8, 208 Human nature, Marx’s concept of, 44–45,
Global-justice movement, 1–2 49–50, 60, 72
Globalisation, 1, 167 Humanism, Marx’s concept of, 33, 52, 66
Godwin, William, 135 n. 142, 70, 73–74, 81, 86–7, 90–2, 115,
Gray, John, 60 n. 118 121, 201, 208, 210–11
Grotius, Hugo, 46 Humanitarianism, 90
Guilds, 123
Ideality and Reality, 38–9, 43, 45–6, 51,
Habermas, Jürgen, 15 54, 79–80, 85–7, 186, 214
Hardt, Michael, 10 Idealism, 23, 33, 38–9, 50, 66–7, 86, 208
Harvey, David, 171 Immanence, 31, 38–9, 54, 80–1, 85, 118,
Having versus Being, 72, 74, 82, 88, 90, 123, 126, 128–9, 131, 145, 165, 179, 191,
112–14 206, 208–14
Health services, 189 Immediacy, 19, 65, 74–5, 84, 127–8, 129
Hegel, G.W.F., 4–5, 10, 15, 19, 22, 26, 31, n. 117, 138, 148, 151, 169, 174, 202, 209,
34, 40–1, 47–8, 51 n. 73, 52, 59, 64–8, 217–19, 220–1
Index • 235
Imperialism, 80, 116 n. 75, 184 dead, 18, 20 n. 61, 32, 34, 113, 127–9,
India, 116, 163 134, 154, 165–6, 171–2, 207
Individuality, 77, 81, 83, 103, 113–14, 119, directly social, 101, 110–11, 113–14,
121–2, 126, 144, 186, 195, 199–202, 208, 159–60, 190–1, 198 n. 45, 210
217–19 division of, 57, 78, 83, 97, 201–2, 210
abstract, 40, 49, 77 freely associated, 30, 99, 112, 156–7,
concrete, 122, 128, 131, 200 159, 161, 168, 175, 177, 182–7, 191–4,
free, 114–15, 144, 201 197, 203–4, 208
Industry, 47, 79, 110, 166–7, 168 n. 80, 169, indirectly social, 101–2, 109–11, 113,
175, 178, 187, 208 138, 141, 159, 190–2, 198, 202, 205, 210
Inequality, 1, 16, 18, 44, 98, 107, 149, 159, living, 25, 27–29, 32, 34, 98, 106, 113,
199 118, 125, 127–8, 130–1, 134–7, 154,
Information-economy, 129–30, 132 164–6, 171–2, 207
Interest-bearing capital, 141, 169, 176 mental, 67–69, 201–2, 210
International Workingmen’s Association. necessary, 28, 101, 125–6, 128, 130–1,
See First International 157
Internationalism, 84, 110, 187 surplus, 28, 101, 124–6, 128, 130–1, 144
Inversion of subject-object, 8, 15, 42–3, see also alienated labour; abstract
48–52, 55, 61–2, 66, 68–9, 75–81, 84–5, labour; concrete labour; dual
88–9, 91, 107, 109, 111, 114–15, 141, character of labour; wage-labour
142 n. 164, 142 n. 166, 153–4, 160, 163, Labour-power, 7, 18, 24, 26, 60 n. 117, 82,
174–5, 182, 185, 193, 207–9, 212–13 117, 118 n. 77, 136, 155, 161–4, 172 n. 94,
Ionian philosophy, 41 175, 189, 191
Irrationality, 58, 86, 102, 107, 139, 197 value of, 24, 97–8, 102, 124
Labour-theory of value, 6–8, 18, 61–2,
James, C.L.R., 31 n. 106 95–7, 102, 125, 128, 130, 137–9, 152, 155,
Jews, 119 n. 82 159, 188 n. 24, 202
Joint-stock companies, 176–9, 181 Labour-time, 95–6, 101–9, 112, 115, 118
Jones, Richard, 139 n. 77, 124, 127–8, 130, 135, 137–9, 143–6,
154, 157–9, 175, 194–200, 202–3, 209–10
Kain, Philip, 210 n. 4 actual, 94, 96–7, 105–7, 109, 118, 157–9,
Kant, Immanuel, 38, 51, 52 n. 77, 67 175, 190–1, 193–6, 198–201, 203
n. 143 socially-necessary, 16, 94, 96–7, 99,
Karatani, Kojin, 186 n. 19 105–7, 109, 111, 121 n. 90, 150, 157–9,
Kaufman, I.I., 147 175, 190–1, 196–200, 203
Kautsky, Karl, 9 n. 19, 80, 89 n. 227, 101 Labour-tokens, 95–6, 98, 100–3, 106–9,
n. 27, 134 n. 133, 167 n. 78, 177 n. 108 139, 175, 194–5, 197–8
Kenya, 2 Labourer, 18, 28–9, 34, 57, 60, 64, 68
Keynesian fiscal policies, 30 n. 147, 95, 97, 111, 117–18, 124, 131, 136,
Kierkegaard, Soren, 13 155, 158–9, 162–5, 168, 170, 176–8, 180,
Kliman, Andrew, 148 n. 2 191, 193–6, 199 n. 48, 209
Kolakowski, Leszek, 91 Land, 47, 60, 74 n. 173, 116, 122–3, 126,
Kornai, János, 195–6 162, 164, 167–8
Kosik, Karel, 77, 115 Lange, Oskar, 140 n. 156
Kouvelakis, Stathis, 73 n. 167 Lassalle, Ferdinand, 80, 89 n. 227, 187–8,
197, 204
Labour, 20, 23–24, 66–8, 98, 124–32, 141–5, Laws, 10–11, 13, 26, 28, 32–3, 44–5, 49–50,
151–61, 164, 179–81, 185–91, 194–6, 199, 52 n. 77, 81 n. 195, 86, 90 n. 23, 106, 108
206, 210, 213 n. 45, 112, 125, 132 n. 127, 138, 143, 147,
abolition of, 82, 129, 203, 210 165–6, 170, 179 n. 111, 211
as subject, 29, 79, 115, 118, 129, 135 natural, 44–6, 49, 102
conditions of, 12, 13 n. 36, 32, 83, 152, Law of value, 30, 135, 138, 140, 158, 180,
195 206
cooperative form of, 29–30, 168, 179, Lenin, V.I., 56 n. 98, 80, 88 n. 227
186, 192–3, 206 Leontief, Wassiley, 173
236 • Index
Leopold, David, 38 n. 3, 47 n. 54, 52 n. 79 The Communist Manifesto (1847), 75,

Leroux, Pierre, 46 82–4, 184–5
Levels-theory, 13–14 Contribution to the Critique of Hegel’s
Lévi-Strauss, Claude, 9 n. 19 ‘Philosophy of Right’, (1843), 47–54, 65
Levinas, Emmanuel, 121 n. 92 n. 138, 69–70, 76
Liberalism, 37 n. 2, 46 Contribution to the Critique of Political
Liebknecht, Wilhelm, 188 Economy (1859), 95 n. 6, 133–4, 136
Lifshitz, Mikhail, 40 n. 138, 141 n. 160
List, Friedrich, 56, 79 ‘Contribution to the Critique of
Lobkowicz, Nicholas, 67–8 Hegel’s Philosophy of Right.
Locke, John, 48 Introduction’ (1843), 54–5
Louis Napoleon, 183 Critique of the Gotha Program (1875), 121
Love, 74 n. 90, 160 n. 49, 187–204, 209
Löwy, Michael, 56 n. 98 ‘Critique of the Hegelian Dialectic’
Ludenhoff, Karel, 204 n. 62 (1844), 65–71, 73 n. 166
Lukács, Georg, 9 n. 19, 73 n. 166, 152, ‘D. Ricardo. Des Principes de l’économie
158–9 politique et de l’impot, traduit de
Luxemburg, Rosa, 9 n. 19, 22, 160–1, Constancio etc.’ (1844), 57 n. 102
172–3, 179 n. 113 Difference Between the Democritean and
Epicurean Philosophies of Nature
Machiavelli, Niccolò, 47 n. 53 (1840–41), 37–43, 46–7, 55, 63 n. 132, 88
Madness. See Inversion ‘Draft of an Article on Friedrich List’s
Malthus, Robert Thomas, 171 Book Das Nationale System der
Mandel, Ernest, 156 n. 36, 171, 173 politischen Ökonomie’ (1845), 79
Mao Zedong, 107 ‘Draft Letters to Vera Zasulich’ (1879),
Marcuse, Herbert, 15, 19, 129, 202–3 210 n. 7
Markets, 3, 7, 11, 14–16, 21, 23, 25, 56–9, ‘Drafts of The Civil War in France’
63, 82, 85–7, 91–2, 98, 104, 107, 108 (1871), 183–7
n. 48, 110, 134, 137–9, 141, 161, 162 Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts
n. 57, 163–6, 172, 182, 192–3, 195–6, 200, (1844), 12, 33, 53, 59–75, 77–8, 82–3,
206, 208, 215 87–91, 94, 113 n. 61, 122 n. 95, 200
commodity, 162, 164, 191–2 n. 53, 216
labour, 82, 162–4, 195 Economic Manuscript of 1861–63, 94, 95
see also World-market n. 6, 133–46, 149
Marx, Karl (works), Capital, Volume I ‘Excerpts from M.M. Kovalevskij’
(1867), 5 n. 5, 12–13, 15, 19–28, 33–5, 59, (1879), 46
60 n. 117, 65, 79, 81 n. 195, 93–4, 95 ‘Exzerpte aus Georg Wilhelm
n. 6, 96, 100, 131, 132 n. 127, 133–4, 136 Friedrich Hegel: Phänomenologies des
n. 138, 138 n. 144, 147–69, 175, 178, 191, Geistes’ (1844), 69 n. 152, 71, 216–21
198, 207, 209, 211 ‘Exzerpte und Notizen 1843 bis Januar
Capital, Volume II (1885), 35, 134, 1845’, 47, 56 n. 97
169–76, 198, 209 The German Ideology, (1846) 75–82,
Capital, Volume III (1894), 28, 35, 131–2, 87–88, 93–94, 167, 205 n. 69
134, 166 n. 77, 169, 176–82, 186, 199 Grundrisse (1857–58), 6–7, 20, 27–9, 33,
Le Capital (1872–75), 20 n. 61, 147 n. 1, 35, 65, 93–4, 95 n. 6, 100–34, 136
166 n. 138, 141, 144, 149, 156, 167, 197, 203
The Civil War in France (1871), 160 n. 59, 204 n. 61
n. 49, 183–7, 192–3 The Holy Family (1845), 76–7, 86, 93, 206
Comments on James Mill, Éléments de n. 69
l’économie politique’ (1844), 56–59, 61 ‘Johann Most. Kapital und Arbeit’
‘Comments on the Latest Prussian (1875), 206
Censorship Instruction’ (1842), 44 Kreuznach Notebooks, 47
‘Communism and the Augsburg ‘Leading Article in No. 179 of Kölnische
Allgemeine Zeitung’ (1842), 46 Zeitung’ (1842), 44–5
Index • 237
‘Letter from Marx to His Father’ Value, Price and Profit (1865), 164
(1837), 38 ‘Wages’ (1847), 94, 100
‘Letter to Engels of August 1, 1856’, 8 Marxism, 16–18, 20, 26, 91–2, 104, 124,
‘Letter to Engels of April 9, 1863’, 188 141, 213–14
n. 23 objectivist, 9–25, 30–2, 35, 129, 131
‘Letter to Ludwig Feuerbach of orthodox, 9 n. 19, 14, 16–17
October 3, 1843’, 50 subjectivist, 9–10, 25–32, 35, 129, 131
‘Letter to Ludwig Feuerbach of see also Marxist-Humanism; post-Marx
August 11, 1843’, 55 Marxism
‘Letters from the Deutsch-Franzöischer Marxist-Humanism, 32–4, 66 n. 142, 141
Jahrbücher’ (1843), 53–4 n. 158
‘Manuskripte zum zweiten Buch des Master/Slave dialectic, 67
‘Kapitals’ 1868 bis 1881’, 5 n. 7 Material conditions, 9 n. 19, 19, 53–4, 57,
Marx-Engels Gesamtausgabe (MEGA2), 60, 79–81, 85, 87, 115–16, 123–4, 129
2, 5, 94 n. 4, 94 n. 5, 169 n. 85, 216 n. 118, 143, 145, 156 n. 36, 168 n. 80, 178,
‘Moralizing Criticism and Critical 186, 201, 212, 214
Morality’ (1847), 83–4 Materialism, 22–3, 33, 38, 50, 56, 60
‘Notebooks on Epicurean Philosophy’ n. 118, 66–7, 77–8, 85–6, 153, 212
(1839–40), 40 n. 17, 41 n. 19, 41–2 abstract, 86
‘Notes on Bakunin’s Book Statehood Materialist conception of history, 2, 30,
and Anarchy’ (1875), 205 78, 116, 211
‘Notes on the Poverty of Philosophy’ McCulloch, John Ramsey, 56
(1880), 94 Means and Ends, 49–51, 51 n. 73, 57, 61,
‘Notes on Wagner’s Lehrbuch der 91–2, 120–1, 145, 181–2, 200–1
politischen Ökonomie’ (1881), 8, 206 Means of production. See Mode of
‘On the Jewish Question’ (1843), 51, 53, production
57, 62 Mediation, 16–17, 31, 49, 52, 54, 56, 58, 71,
The Poverty of Philosophy (1847), 93–101, 77, 71, 77, 82, 103, 108–9, 110–11, 113,
103, 105, 124 n. 102, 134 n. 131, 149, 120, 204, 217–18, 221
197 Megill, Allan, 4, 4 n. 5, 58 n. 110, 85–9,
‘Proceedings of the Sixth Rhine 91
Assembly. First Article. Debates Mészáros, Istvan, 2 n. 2, 47 n. 55
on Freedom of the Press and Metaphysics, 16, 31, 76, 121 n. 92, 147, 208
Publication of the Proceedings of the Middle Ages, 119 n. 82
Assembly of the Estates’ (1842), Mill, James, 56–9, 62, 135
44–6 Mill, John Stuart, 102, 117, 135, 137, 139
‘Proceedings of the Sixth Rhine Miller, A.V., 216
Province Assembly. Third Article on Mode of production, 7, 16 n. 52, 56, 60,
the Law of Thefts of Wood’ (1842), 77, 99, 106, 114, 116 n. 75, 123, 140–1,
46–7 145, 153–8, 161–3, 165, 167, 170, 172
‘Reflections of a Young Man on the n. 94, 174–9, 181, 189–90, 196, 206,
Choice of a Profession’ (1835), 209–10
39, 86 see also Production-relations;
‘Results of the Immediate Process of Productive forces
Production’ (1866), 94 n. 6, 153 Monetary capital, 141, 169, 174–5
n. 21, 165 Money, 13 n. 36, 21, 22 n. 66, 23, 27–8,
Supplement to Nos. 335 and 336 of the 56–7, 69 n. 152, 73 n. 166, 95, 101 n. 28,
Augsburg Allgemiene Zeitung on the 102–6, 108–9, 111, 113, 118, 122 n. 93,
Commissions of the Estates in 133, 136–41, 159 n. 46, 160–4, 198, 219
Prussia’ (1842), 49 Monopoly, 11, 178
Theories of Surplus Value (1861–63), 134, Montesquieu, Charles-Louis de
137 n. 142, 169 n. 84 Secondat, 47 n. 53
‘Theses on Feuerbach’ (1845), 77, 86 Morality, 44, 50, 124, 210, 219
n. 217 Murray, Patrick, 9, 73 n. 166
238 • Index
Music, 203 n. 59 Paolucci, Paul, 7 n. 13, 67 n. 143

Mystification, 7 n. 13, 81 n. 195, 152–5, Paris, 55 n. 96
160, 197, 208 Passion, 6, 82, 88, 206
see also Desire
National minorities, 206 Paris Commune (1871), 160, 183–7, 204
Nationalism, 84 Particular versus Universal interests,
Nature, 1, 16, 31, 41, 64, 72, 74, 90–1, 116, 45–6, 53, 60, 77
118–20, 122, 127–8, 135, 139, 142, 168, Patriarchy, 72
181–2, 188, 199–200, 203, 210, 217 Paz, Octavio, 50 n. 65
Natural limits, 13, 90 Peasantry, 118, 122, 126, 167–8
Naturalism. See Humanism Peperzak, Adrian, 211 n. 9
Necessity, 20, 34, 39–40, 48, 64, 85, 88, Phenomenological reduction, 142, 150
90, 121, 144–5, 147, 165, 169, 181–2, Philosophical dualism, 40–2, 51, 55
199–200, 203–4, 210–11, 214, 220 Philosophical moment, 6
Needs, 1, 7, 21, 57, 78–9, 87, 90, 97, Philosophy of revolution, 81
110–11, 112–15, 120–2, 124–6, 131, 140, Phoenicians, 119 n. 82
143–4, 157, 159, 175–6, 181, 200, 202, 215 Pillot, Jean-Jacques, 60 n. 118
Negation. See Negativity; Negation of Planned economy, 3, 14, 17, 103–4, 107
the negation n. 48, 140, 141 n. 157, 173–4, 182, 213
Negation of the negation, 5, 33, 33 n. 115, Play, 132–3, 202, 203 n. 59
65, 70–3, 107, 168, 217 Plekhanov, Georgii, 9 n. 19
see also Communism; Socialism; Hegel, Plato, 38 n. 5, 42 n. 24, 200, 212
G.W.F. Plutarch, 42
Negativity, 5, 26, 64, 103, 133, 217, 220–1 Poland, 119 n. 82
absolute, 5, 34, 65 Political economy, 5, 7, 12–13, 24, 46,
abstract, 65, 70, 72 60–2, 64 n. 134, 67 n. 143, 68, 77 n. 183,
see also negation of the negation 79, 94, 119, 134, 138, 149–52, 155, 169,
Negri, Antonio, 10, 26–32, 129–30 171
Neo-Ricardian socialists, 18, 96, 100, 114, Polanyi, Michael, 6
135, 137, 138–41, 143, 159–60 Population, 125
Neurath, Otto, 3, 198 n. 45 Post-Marx Marxism, 92, 104, 187–90, 195,
New society, 24, 30–2, 35, 58, 72, 75, 205, 213–14
79, 84, 96–7, 99, 101, 108–12, 115–17, see also Marxism, objectivist; Marxism,
120–3, 129, 131–3, 145–6, 156–8, 161, orthodox; Marxism, subjectivist
164, 168, 174–7, 182, 185–7, 189, 192, Postcapitalist society, 3–5, 7, 14, 18,
194, 202–13 21, 25, 30–1, 63–4, 78–9, 81, 84, 90–1,
see also socialism; communism; 95–6, 99, 101, 111–14, 116–17, 120–1,
postcapitalist society; transcendence 123, 127–8, 131–2, 134, 137, 143–5, 148,
of value-production 155–60, 164, 170, 174–5, 181–82, 187,
Non-Western societies, 2, 168 n. 80, 214 189, 192–7, 201–9, 213–14
Normative commitments, 4, 43, 62, 81, Postone, Moishe, 9, 16–21, 23, 25, 129,
85, 91, 201, 209, 211, 214 141, 203 n. 60
Poverty, 201, 214
Objective/subjective, relation of, 9, 32, 41 Pragmatism, 44
n. 19, 65, 90, 113, 129, 137, 221, 219 Praxis, 90
Ollman, Bertell, 35–6 Precapitalist societies, 6–7, 35, 57, 112–13,
Ontology, 44, 85, 158 116–20, 122, 155, 168
Organisation, 184–8, 192, 204–5 Predictability, 39, 86, 88, 139
of thought, 41–3, 55 Prices, 13 n. 36, 18, 23, 52, 86, 92, 95, 102,
of masses of people, 81, 184–5 104, 104–8, 110, 119, 134, 137–9, 161,
of small groups, 186, 205 164, 193
Owen, Robert, 3 n. 4, 60 n. 118, 135 Private Property. See Property, private
n. 135, 160, 179 Production-relations, 11–12, 14, 20–1,
Overproduction, 134 30, 32, 87, 94, 98–9, 102–5, 107–9, 112,
Index • 239
114–15, 117, 120, 124, 131, 136, 140, Germany (1918), 3

154–8, 160, 164–5, 169–70, 172–80, 183, permanent, Marx’s concept of, 53, 73–4
187, 189, 191–2, 198–202 see also Paris Commune
Productive forces, 79, 83, 87, 100, 121, Revolutionary Communist Society, 56
120, 126, 131, 181–2, 184, 201, 210, 214 n. 98
Productivity, 18, 106, 113–14, 125, 127, Revolutionary dictatorship of the
132, 145, 196–7 proletariat, 204–5
Profit, 10, 26, 138 n. 146, 164, 169, 171, 172 Ricardo, David, 18, 56, 57 n. 102, 94–6, 98,
n. 94 100, 114, 121, 135–9, 140 n. 154, 141, 143,
decline in the rate of, 10, 28, 125, 161, 149, 155
176 Rockmore, Tom, 118 n. 77
Proletariat, 10, 17, 30, 53, 55 n. 96, 60, Rodbertus, Johann Karl, 171
78–9, 81, 83–4, 88, 131, 139, 184, 187, Rogin, Leo, 140 n. 156
205, 210 n. 7 Rojahn, Jürgen, 59 n. 111, 63 n. 131
Property, 64, 74, 83, 177–9 Rosdolsky, Roman, 93 n. 1
private, 11–12, 14–16, 38, 56, 60–3, 70, Rose, Gillian, 5 n. 6
72–3, 75, 82–3, 85, 92, 104, 122 n. 95, Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, 46, 47 n. 53, 48
161, 167–8, 173, 176–8, 208 Ruge, Arnold, 54, 80
state, 17, 74 n. 173, 166–8 Russia, 116 n. 72, 173 n. 98, 210 n. 7
communal, 72, 114, 116 n. 72, 119, 123,
163, 168 n. 80, 188–9, 201 Saint-Simon, Claude Henri de Rouvroy,
Proudhon, Pierre-Joseph, 46, 62–4, 64 60 n. 118, 135 n. 135, 179
n. 134, 94–9, 101–2, 105–9, 114, 159–60, Sartre, Jean-Paul, 9 n. 19
184 n. 3, 186 n. 19, 197 Say, Jean-Baptiste, 56, 57 n. 102
Prussia, 43 Schaffle, Albert Eberhard Friedrich, 206
Public-sector employees, 1, 112 n. 59, 132 Schelling, F.W.J., 50 n. 68
Science, 4, 40, 79, 87–9, 91, 95, 127–8, 133,
Race, 2 164, 212, 221
Ramsey, George, 139 Second International, 115 n. 72, 173 n. 98,
Ranke, Leopold de, 47 n. 53 177 n. 108
Rationalism, 44, 85, 89, 109, 165, 173, 197, Sekine, Thomas, 9–12, 13 n. 36, 14 n. 45
208 Self-activity of the masses, 9 n. 19, 115,
Realisation of surplus-value, 165–6, 172 182, 184–7, 201, 207–8
Reason, 34, 85–87, 218–19 Self-consciousness, 34, 44, 66, 68–9, 72,
Reification, 8, 11, 60, 153–6, 166, 208 203, 217–20
Religion, 44, 62, 71, 140, 159 n. 45, 183, Self-determination of the idea, 42, 71–3
217, 219–21 Self-knowledge, 37, 63, 203, 219–21
Remuneration, 103, 106, 118, 122, 193–4, Seneca, 39, 39 n. 11
195 n. 40, 196–9, 203, 209 Senegal, 2
Rent, 176 Sensuousness, 40, 42, 72, 74–5, 82, 88, 91,
Reproduction, 145, 162, 171–5, 177, 203, 113, 120, 122, 145, 200, 204 n. 61, 218
210–11 Separation of workers from objective
simple, 133, 174 conditions of production, 60, 162–6,
expanded, 164, 172–5 168, 176–8
Resistance, 13, 25, 29, 32–4, 129, 141 Serfdom, 117, 162–3
n. 158, 206, 211 Service-sector, 30, 132, 189
Retrogression, 70, 76, 104 Sieyès, Emmanuel, 55 n. 94
Reuten, Geert, 9 Sismondi, Jean Charles Léonard de, 171
Revolution, 31, 56, 73, 80, 83, 105, 132, Skarbek, Fréderick, 56
177, 179, 184–7, 193, 204, 209, 210 n. 7, Skepticism, 41
213, 215 Slavery, 117–18, 162–3, 185, 187, 213
Bavaria (1918–19), 3 Smith, Adam, 8, 56, 121, 139, 155, 171–2,
China (1949), 116 203 n. 59
France (1789), 40, 47, 55 n. 94 Smith, Cyril, 205
240 • Index
Smith, Tony, 9, 9 n. 18, 31–3 Swedenborg, Emanuel, 41 n. 22

Socially-necessary labour-time. Sweezy, Paul, 171
See labour-time, socially-necessary Syllogism, 5, 72, 217
Socialism, 3, 8, 14, 17, 30, 53, 56, 73, 77 of Universal-Particular-Individual,
n. 185, 79–80, 83, 84 n. 209, 96, 99–100, 5 n. 7, 32–3, 71, 103, 217–18
110–11, 114, 141, 160, 165, 167, 174–5,
177–9, 181–2, 186, 189–94, 196, 198, Technological innovation, 19, 28, 79, 83,
202–6, 208, 212, 214–15 87, 127, 130–2, 182, 210
higher phase of, 199 n. 46, 200–1, 203, Thatcher, Margaret, 2 n. 2
206, 209–10, 212 Themistocles, 41
lower phase of, 193–6, 199 n. 48, 200–3, Theory, 9 n. 19, 20, 24 n. 80, 26, 29, 39, 59,
205, 209–10 67–8, 73 n. 166, 75, 76 n. 179, 80, 82–3,
see also abolition of value-production; 86
communism; absolute movement Thing-in-itself, 142
of becoming; individuality, free; Thompson, William, 96
new society; negation of the Time, 97, 99, 112–13, 127–8, 131, 144–6,
negation; postcapitalist society; 159–60, 182, 187, 191, 196, 201–3, 209,
value-production, transcendence of 221
Society of Egalitarian Workers, 56 n. 989 as space for human development, 146,
South Korea, 97 159–60, 191, 202
Species-being, 16, 18, 53, 68, 90, 144, 182 see also Labour-time
n. 121, 202 Totalitarianism, 63–4, 91, 140, 195, 213
see also Human nature n. 12
Spinoza, Benedict de, 26, 46, 103 n. 36 see also Stalinism; State-capitalism
Spontaneity, 30–1, 80–1, 88, 115 n. 71 Totality, 13, 15, 32, 74–5, 84, 91, 112, 118,
Stalinism, 173 n. 98, 190, 213 n. 12 133, 145, 217
State (the), 5, 11, 14, 38, 46–50, 66, 71, Transcendence of alienation, 63, 65–6, 68,
76–7, 78 n. 187, 84 n. 209, 85, 104, 110, 70, 71 n. 157, 71, 73, 73 n. 166, 121
167, 173, 175, 178, 182–6, 206–8 n. 89, 155, 212, 218
abolition of, 52 n. 78, 145, 183–6, 204–5 see also value-production,
single party, 140, 204 transcendence of
welfare, 17, 110, 112 n. 59 Transformation into opposite, 138
workers’, 205 Transhistorical phenomena, 7, 16–18, 68,
State-capitalism, 3, 14, 17, 25, 63–4, 77 121 n. 89
n. 185, 104, 140, 166 n. 76, 173, 208, 213–14 Transitional formations, 99–100, 117, 161,
see also Union of Soviet Socialist 176–82, 186, 204, 206
Republics (USSR); China; German Transparency of social relations, 139,
Social Democracy 158–60, 197–8, 200–1
Stoicism, 41 Trigg, Andrew B., 173
Subject. See labour; capital; resistance; Tronti, Mario, 10, 25
value Truth, 34, 39, 45, 66 n. 142, 76, 87, 149
Subjects of liberation, 17, 19, 21, 85, 206, n. 10, 218–21
208
see also Proletariat; Class-Struggle; Uchida, 93 n. 1
Labour, as subject Ukraine, 213 n. 12
Substance as subject, 19–20, 48, 220–1 Underconsumptionism, 171–2
Substance of value, 12, 13, 97, 104, 125, Unemployment, 125, 130, 132
135, 137, 139, 148–9, 150–2, 191–2 Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
Suffering, 87–88, 91 (USSR), 1, 14, 14 n. 45, 17, 25, 107 n. 48,
Supply and demand, 86, 106, 137 140, 141 n. 157, 162 n. 57, 166 n. 76, 173,
Surplus-value, 6, 17, 24, 94, 124, 126, 134, 195, 213 n. 12
138 n. 146, 162, 139 n. 146, 162, 172 United States of America (USA), 9, 101
n. 94 n. 28, 112 n. 59, 132 n. 126, 197 n. 43
Index • 241
Universality, 32, 38 n. 5, 41 n. 19, 70–1, 86, see also Abstract labour; Capital;
88, 103, 114–16, 120, 126, 217–20 Exchange-value; Forms of value
Uno, Kozo, 9, 11–15, 21, 23–4 Valorisation. See Realisation of surplus-
Use-value, 7, 95, 124, 127, 150, 156, 191 value
Utilitarianism, 44 Venezuela, 2, 110 n. 54
Utopian socialism, 3, 31, 56, 60 n. 118, 63, Vienna circle, 3
84, 91, 99, 159
Uzbekistan, 213 n. 12 Wage-labour, 4, 17, 26, 57, 63–4, 82–3,
98, 103, 117–18, 122, 161–5, 167, 170–2,
Value, 6–7, 18–19, 23–4, 26, 30, 56, 86, 90, 188 n. 23, 194–6, 202, 213
92, 95–8, 104–8, 112–14, 119–22, 124–5, Wagner, Adolph, 7 n. 13, 206
127, 134–40, 142–3, 145, 148–52, 156, 158, Wealth, contrasted with value, 17–18
161, 164–7, 170, 175–6, 179, 182, 188 Women, 48, 66, 194, 202, 206, 208, 210
n. 24, 189, 191, 194, 197–8, 204, 208–10 Women’s liberation, 72, 186 n. 18, 202,
as subject, 20–1, 122 206, 208
as distinct from exchange-value, Working class, 17, 24, 29, 29 n. 99, 75, 79,
148–51, 191 82, 89 n. 227, 98, 100, 104, 118, 125, 129,
see also Capital; Law of value; 131–2, 141 n. 158, 143–4, 163–6, 170, 172,
Value-production 176–8, 180, 183–4, 186, 189, 193–6, 204
Value-production, 2, 4, 6–8, 10, 12, 16–19, n. 62, 205, 208
23, 37 n. 2, 42, 68, 80, 99, 104, 109–10, see also Labourer; Proletariat
115, 119–22, 124–7, 130–1, 139–43, 148, Working day, 125–6
151–2, 155, 158–60, 166–7, 180, 192, 195 World-market, 2, 80, 196
n. 38, 196–8, 203, 205–8, 214 World-revolution, 79, 110, 180 n. 115
transcendence of, 5–6, 10, 17–18, 35, 63,
116, 127, 130–1, 137, 155–60, 174–5, Young Hegelians, 40, 43, 53, 62, 94
181–2, 189–206, 211 Youth, 206

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Marx’s Concept of the Alternative to Capitalism

The titles published in this series are listed at brill.nl/hm

â•… HB501.H7835 2012

Copyright 2012 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands.

This book is printed on acid-free paper.

Acknowledgementsâ•‡ ......................................................................................... vii

Introductionâ•… Why Explore Marx’s Concept of the Transcendence of

1.â•‡ The Transcendence of Alienation in the Writings of the

2.â•‡ The Conception of a Postcapitalist Society in the Drafts of Capitalâ•‡ ..... 93

4.â•‡ Marx’s Late Writings on Postcapitalist Societyâ•‡ ...................................... 183

Conclusionâ•… Evaluating Marx’s Concept of a Postcapitalist Societyâ•‡ ...... 207

Appendixâ•… Translation of Marx’s Excerpt-Notes on the Chapter

Referencesâ•‡ ......................................................................................................... 223

The object and purpose of this study

5.â•‡ Megill 2002, p. 240.

Third, although most of Marx’s work consists of an analysis and criticism

approach to the understanding of capitalism that retains its historical rele-

This work focuses on Marx’s concept of the transcendence of value-produc-

â•‡ 8.â•‡ Foucault 2003, p. 387.

same time an equivalent for all other commodities in a particular ratio’.11

11.â•‡ Marx 1986a, pp. 78–9.

14.â•‡ Marx 1989h, p. 533.

Objectivist and subjectivist approaches to Marx’s philosophical

20.â•‡ Sekine 1997b, p. 212.

25.â•‡ Sekine 1990, pp. 128–9.

the contemporary world ‘cannot constitute a world-historic stage of develop-

30.â•‡ Sekine, 1997b, p. 216.

40.â•‡ Albritton 1999, p. 75.

Another version of objectivist Marxism is found in the work of a number of

46.â•‡ See Backhaus 1997.

‘blind’ mechanism regulating the exchange of commodities. For traditional

53.â•‡ Postone 1993, p. 49.

the transcendence of capitalism. Postone goes as far as to contend that dead

56.â•‡ Postone 1993, p. 80.

which it is constantly driven towards technological innovation regardless of

57.â•‡ Postone 1993, p. 297.

subject’; he calls value ‘the dominant subject [übergreifendes Subjekt] of this

59.â•‡ Marx 1976e, p. 255.

word, by conflating Marx’s discussion of value as ‘an automatic subject’ at a

63.â•‡ Arthur 2002, p. 64.

their actual appearance in history’.64 Capital consists of a sequential ordering of

64.â•‡ Arthur 2002, p. 4.

writes that to adequately comprehend Marx, we need to recognise that ‘The

67.â•‡ Arthur 2002, p. 24.

He contends that, in Capital, ‘Marx has a dogmatic beginning in so far as he

75.â•‡ Arthur 2002, p. 12.

is absorbed into that of capital to all intents, it is necessary to bear in mind

What does Arthur’s ‘systematic dialectics’ suggest about a possible alterna-

81.â•‡ Arthur 2002, p. 52.

that capital is in control of modern society, it is actually a reactive, not creative

Third, whereas the objectivists emphasise Marx’s contributions to economics

94.â•‡ Marx 1986a, p. 172.

on an economistic level and objectified improperly’. It is an approach that

Although Negri’s effort to account for agency illuminates important aspects

102.â•‡ Negri 1984, p. 83.

utopia and a limitation on his research on the contemporary historical limits

104.â•‡ Negri 1999, p. 264.

consists entirely of an account of the dialectical methodology used in the

107.â•‡ Smith 1993, pp. 18, 29.

112.â•‡ Dunayevskaya 1981, p. 140.

116.â•‡ Dunayevskaya 2002, p. 184.

118.â•‡ Ollman 2003, pp. 183–4.